Empresas que más dinero ganan con la guerra
War - It's frequently about corporate welfare!!! As Randolph Bourne said: "War is the Health of the State" And the special interest groups that help our rulers get elected love war because it means money in their wallets!!!! SourceEmpresas que más dinero ganan con la guerra Dicen que los conflictos bélicos son uno de los negocios más lucrativos del mundo y ¿cómo no serlo si muchos países gastan enormes cantidades al año para tener el mejor armamento?. Empresas de artillería, aviones, electrónica, sistemas de defensa y demás armamento militar hay muchas, pero no todas logran tener el éxito que desean; es por eso que el Anuario 2013 del Instituto de Investigación de la Paz de Estocolmo (SIPRI), da a conocer las 100 mejores corporaciones en cuanto a fabricación y ventas se refiere, en el año 2011. En este documento, se da a conocer también, que el total de las ventas en ese año llegó a los 465 mil 770 millones de dólares, aumentando un 14% con respecto de años anteriores. Estas diez empresas suman un total de 233.540 dólares en ventas, lo cual se refiere al 50% del total de las cien empresas juntas pero, ¿cuáles son estas 10 poderosas corporaciones? Con información de abc.es, te dejamos el ranking de las 10 empresas que más ganan con los conflictos bélicos. 10. United Technologies. Se trata del tercer conglomerado estadounidense que se logra colar en esta lista con ventas de 11 mil 640 millones de dólares, por proveer al mundo de aeronaves, motores y electrónica para las guerras. 9. L-3 Communications. Electrónica, sistemas de defensa y productos de navegación son sólo algunas de las ofertas que L-3 Communications ofrece al mundo; debido a esto, sus ventas llegaron a los 12 mil 520 millones de dólares. 8. Finmeccanica. Esta es una empresa italiana especializada en la fabricación de aviones, helicópteros, electrónica y sistemas de defensa. Sus ventas llegaron a los 14 mil 560 millones de dólares y debido a su importancia tiene ya representación en más de 100 países. 7. EADS. European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, EADS por sus siglas, es una sociedad que se dedica a la fabricación de aviones y misiles en la Unión Europea, logrando en 2011 un total de 16 mil 390 millones de dólares en ventas. 6. Northrop Grumman. Otro de los conglomerados de empresas estadounidenses que ha logrado sobresalir en esta lista es Northrop Grumman, al alcanzar 21 mil 390 millones de dólares en ventas de aviones, misiles y buques de guerra, entre otros. 5. Raytheon. Es uno de los contratistas de defensa militar más grande de Estados Unidos y se encarga de la producción de misiles y electrónica. En 2011, sus ventas lograron recaudar 22 mil 470 millones de dólares. 4. General Dynamics. Aviones, artillería y electrónica son las principales fabricaciones de este conglomerado de empresas estadounidense, logrando obtener la módica cantidad de 23 mil 760 millones de dólares y el cuarto lugar en esta lista. 3. BAE Systems. Esta constructora aeronáutica británica tiene base en la costa sur de Inglaterra y provee al mundo de aviones, misiles, artillería y vehículos militares. La suma de sus ventas fue de 29 mil 150 millones de dólares en 2011. 2. Boeing. Siendo una empresa de aeronáutica y defensa, Boeing es la segunda mayor corporación dedicada a la fabricación de aviones y naves aeroespaciales; tanto, que sus ventas alcanzaron los 31 mil 830 millones de dólares, colocándola en el segundo lugar de la lista. 1. Lockheed Martin. Esta compañía multinacional ubicada en Washington, es la encargada de la producción de misiles y electrónica, además de espacio aéreo. Sus ventas en 2011 suman un total de 36 mil 270 millones de dólares.
Guerras mexicanas que no están en tu libro de historia
And sadly governments usually write the history books about war to make the government look good.
Source
Guerras mexicanas que no están en tu libro de historia Desde ocasionar otras contiendas hasta cambiar por completo la dinámica de la sociedad mexicana; conoce las consecuencias de algunos conflictos de los que poco has escuchado. La historia de México está plagada de conflictos bélicos que ayudaron a conformar nuestro país tal como es el día de hoy. Algunas de estas guerras o batallas rara vez figuran en los libros, pero no cabe duda que tuvieron gran importancia. Algunas de ellas fueron el antecedente de otras guerras más famosas, como la Revolución Mexicana; otras, propiciaron acontecimientos de suma importancia, como la anexión o pérdida de territorios o la creación del Himno Nacional; y algunas más configuraron la dinámica social a través de movimientos migratorios o colocaron a México en el mapa gracias al cine nacional. Rebelión de Cisteil. Una de las sublevaciones mayas contra los españoles en la época colonial. Liderada por Jacinto Canek, los mayas fueron vencidos, torturados y ejecutados. Sin embargo, fue el preludio de otras revueltas, como la Guerra de Castas. Batalla de Pueblo Viejo. España intentó reconquistar México y fue vencida en Tampico en 1829, reconociendo la independencia en 1836. Años más tarde, Santa Anna lo usó como pretexto convocando a crear el Himno Nacional durante la Revolución de Ayutla. Guerra contra los Comanches. En el siglo XIX los comanches atacaban el norte de México. Para controlar la frontera, el gobierno favoreció la colonización que, junto con otras causas, propició la independencia de Texas y la invasión norteamericana. Guerra de Castas. El gobierno de Yucatán (un país independiente) y los indígenas mayas se enfrascaron en una guerra. México aceptó ayudar al gobierno yucateco a detenerlos, a cambio de su reincorporación al país en 1848. La guerra terminó en 1901. Batalla de Guaymas. Un conde francés organizó una revuelta exigiendo la independencia de Sonora en 1854, pero fue vencido. La victoria de los mexicanos evitó que Sonora y Baja California se independizaran, o que fueran colonizadas por otro país. Rebelión de Valladolid. La "primera chispa de la Revolución", sucedió en junio de 1910, cuando los yucatecos tomaron la ciudad rebelándose contra el gobierno porfirista. Aunque fue sofocada, propició que otras regiones se alzaran contra la dictadura. Segunda Guerra Mundial. En mayo de 1942, México declaró la guerra a las potencias del Eje tras el hundimiento de varios buques petroleros y envió un escuadrón aéreo de 300 hombres (Escuadrón 201) que entró en combate en el Pacífico en junio de 1945. Segunda Guerra Mundial (cont). Con la guerra se impulsó la música (Agustín Lara compuso "Cantar del Regimiento") y el Cine Mexicano se dio a conocer en el mundo. Además, se creó el programa de braceros, que detonó la migración a Estados Unidos.
Arizona DUI tests are no longer required by law!!!!!!!
Arizona Mandatory DUI Breathalyzer tests ruled unconstitutional - Don't take the !!!!
Arizona Mandatory DUI tests unconstitutional????
SourceArizona Supreme Court bars DUI blood tests without warrant
HOWARD FISCHER Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX -- Police cannot use the state's traffic laws to draw blood from suspected drunk drivers without a warrant absent their specific permission at the time of the test, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In a unanimous decision, the justices rejected the contention by the Pima County Attorney's Office that all Arizona motorists give "implied consent" to having blood, breath or urine tests as a condition to be licensed to drive. They said that means, absent a clear -- and voluntary -- consent immediately prior to the blood draw, it is an illegal search without a warrant.
In a wide-ranging ruling, the high court also said that the ability of juveniles to give that voluntary consent is not absolute -- and not the same as an adult. Justice Scott Bales, writing for the court, said a trial judge must consider all the factors, including the age of the suspect and the failure to notify parents.
But the justices refused to rule that the absence of a juvenile's parents automatically means any consent is not voluntary.
Thursday's ruling most immediately means that charges of driving under the influence of drugs will be dropped against the youth, identified in court records only as Tyler B. because he was 16 at the time of the arrest.
But he is not out of the legal woods yet. Deputy County Attorney Nicolette Kneut said Tyler, who has since turned 18, still faces charges of possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia in justice court as an adult.
Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall said Thursday's ruling will complicate the job that police statewide are required to do. She said the high court has provided no guidance.
"How is the officer supposed to know whether or not it's been an express consent," she said. "It just makes it really, really tough because there isn't any bright line." [Duh, the 4th Amendment you idiot!!!!]
LaWall said the ruling means that her office will advise police to get a court-ordered warrant whenever possible before drawing blood, even when a motorist -- and now, especially a juvenile -- gives approval for a blood draw. That, she said, eliminates any possibility of having that consent later ruled involuntary.
According to court records, Tyler and two friends arrived late to school. A school monitor smelled marijuana on the boys and also saw drug paraphernalia in Tyler's car.
The boys were detained in separate rooms while sheriff's deputies were contacted.
A deputy read Tyler his Miranda warnings against self-incrimination and the right to an attorney. But the court files said that Tyler, in the presence of several school officials, admitted he had driven his car to school after smoking marijuana and that he owned some of the paraphernalia in the car.
When the deputy placed Tyler under arrested, the youth became agitated and was placed in handcuffs while the deputy retrieved a blood-draw kit from his car.
On returning, he saw Tyler had calmed down and he removed the cuffs. He then read Tyler from the law which says that Arizona motorists must consent to blood or other tests and that refusal will result in automatic suspension of driving privileges.
Tyler agreed verbally and in writing to the blood draw. But when the case went to court, Tyler argued his consent was not voluntary and that, as a minor, he lacked capacity to consent.
When the court commissioner agreed and suppressed the evidence, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Bales said the issue has never been decided in Arizona.
Bales rejected arguments by prosecutors that "implied consent" law means there is no need to determine whether a consent at the time of the blood draw is voluntary.
"A compelled blood draw, even when administered pursuant to (the implied consent law) is a search subject to the Fourth Amendment's constraints," he wrote for the court. "Such an invasion of bodily integrity implicates an individual's most personal and deep-rooted expectations of privacy."
He said the law says only that an officer must ask a suspect to submit to the test -- and that if a person refuses, a warrant is needed and the suspect's licenses is suspended.
Bales said a motorist can allow a warrantless search "provided the consent is voluntary." But that, he said has to be decided by a court based on all the circumstances, including the suspect's age -- and even whether a parent is present.
In this case, Bales wrote, the court commissioner was correct in ruling that, based on the evidence she had, Tyler's consent was not voluntary.
He said Tyler was detained for about two hours in a room in the presence of school officials and a deputy, without his parents.
"Tyler initially was shaking and visibly nervous," Bales wrote, and placed in handcuffs until he calmed down. And he said that the law read to him about "implied consent" ended with the statement, "You are, therefore, required to submit to the specified tests."
It was only then, Bales said, Tyler consented to the blood draw.
Thursday's ruling drew a special comment from Justice John Pelander. He said his own review of the evidence leads him to believe Tyler did voluntarily consent.
But Pelander said Arizona law requires he and the other justices not to reweigh the evidence but only to consider whether the court commissioner abused her discretion in suppressing the evidence.
But of course don't expect anything to happen, other then hear a bunch of hot air from the members of the Congress and Senate who will be promising to end all these crimes if they just get reelected.
Reach Robert Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8472.
Posted on September 26, 2013 4:28 pm by Robert Robb
Put NSA in a narrower box
The United States needs to put the National Security Agency into a much more narrowly defined box. It’s out of control. And it’s out of control in a way that violates civil liberties and harms U.S. national interests.
Brazil is Latin America’s leading economy and one of the most important countries in the developing world. The United States wants warmer relations with it and to facilitate that had invited President Dilma Rousseff for a rare full-spectrum state visit, with all the pomp and circumstance such occasions can be vested with. For U.S. diplomacy, it was a big deal.
Rousseff canceled the state visit. She did, however, come to the United States. She went to the United Nations to harshly denounce the United States.
Why? News came out that the NSA was intercepting her phone calls and emails. And those of her staff and government. And of Petrobras, the Brazilian state oil company.
The National Security Agency is supposed to be a “security” agency. It is part of the Department of Defense.
So, what threat to U.S. security do the Brazilian president, her government and the state oil company pose?
Earlier it was revealed that the NSA was extensively snooping on European Union officials. And what threat to U.S. national security were they hatching?
The NSA was looking at the emails of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto – before he was ever elected.
This gratuitous spying, with utterly no rational connection to protecting the United States against any conceivable security threat, has consequences.
Obviously, it put the kibosh on an important U.S. diplomatic overture to Brazil, to put it mildly.
Brazil is in the market for some new fighter jets. Boeing, a U.S. company, is a bidder. The NSA making sure there are no terrorist plots emanating from Rousseff’s office is thought to have damaged its prospects.
Brazil is also auctioning off deep-sea oil concessions, in which American companies have an interest. In Brazil, however, the question is whether NSA spying on Petrobras has irredeemably tainted the process.
The United States wants a free trade agreement with the European Union. NSA spying on EU officials has, unsurprisingly, cooled interest in Europe and raised questions about whether the integrity of negotiations for such a treaty could be protected.
Domestically, NSA is also out of the box. It’s not supposed to be prying within the United States. The Patriot Act increased the intelligence gathering power of the FBI, not the NSA. Yet it is the NSA that has the telephone records of virtually every U.S. resident.
The NSA has an important job to do. It’s supposed to gather intelligence about true national security threats. In so doing, it will need periodically to follow leads to sources in this country and in foreign governments.
But that’s not what the NSA is doing. Its indiscriminate collection of data is vastly outside its writ, violates civil liberties domestically and internationally, and is damaging U.S. interests.
It is also jeopardizing NSA’s ability to do its true national security job. NSA can tap so easily into Internet data because so much of it is routed through the United States. The NSA revelations, however, have caused other countries to become more interested in developing Internet routes that avoid the United States. They have also given impetus to calls to put the Internet under some sort of international control, which would be disastrous in numerous respects.
Yes, everyone spies. But no one spies as invasively as the NSA. The invasive capabilities we justifiably develop and use for national security shouldn’t be turned to gaining diplomatic or commercial advantage.
And yes, these rows wouldn’t be taking place except for the leaks by Edward Snowden. But it would be unwise for the United States, in today’s interconnected world, to assume that the agency it assigns to steal the secrets of others will be able to perfectly protect its own.
Microsoft outlines 66,539 account requests from law enforcement during first half of 2013
By Timothy J. Seppala posted Sep 28th, 2013 at 11:53 AM 18
We've covered various transparency reports before, but now the whole notion takes on a different feel in our post-PRISM world. Microsoft's latest report details that it received 37,196 requests from law enforcement agencies between this January and June, which impacted 66,539 of its accounts. Seventy-seven percent of those requests were for data like a user's name, IP history and billing address, and with 21 percent of requests, no data was disclosed at all. However, in 2.19 percent of queries by law enforcement, Redmond disclosed "at least some" customer content. What does that mean? Well, the company's definition includes the subject or body of an email, photos stored in SkyDrive and address book info. According to the document, the info was all obtained via lawful warrants and court orders.
While National Security Letters also fall under the guise of law enforcement requests -- which primarily come from the FBI in order to obtain records such as phone numbers and email addresses -- Microsoft is only allowed to publish these statistics on an annual basis. Hence, they're absent this time around, and will be published in the company's next Law Enforcement Requests Report. To see just how deep the rabbit hole goes, do check out the source. We suggest putting on a pot of coffee, though -- it's not a quick read.
NSA watchdog: Employees spied on lovers
Associated Press Fri Sep 27, 2013 10:44 AM
WASHINGTON — Some workers at the National Security Agency intentionally misused the government’s secret surveillance systems at least 12 times over the past decade, including instances when they spied on spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends, according to embarrassing new details disclosed by the agency’s inspector general. In nearly every case, the workers were allowed to retire before they could be punished. [While us civilians will get draconian prison sentences for trivial crimes, government employees rarely get more then a slap on the wrist for major crimes]
In addition to the 12 historical cases, authorities are investigating two other suspected violations and reviewing a third allegation for possible investigation, the inspector general, George Ellard, told Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, in a letter released late Thursday.
Senior national security officials and some U.S. lawmakers have said such cases were exceedingly rare considering the breadth of the NSA’s surveillance programs and reflect how seriously the government monitors use of its systems for potential abuses. [Yea, that's what they always say. The f*ck up never happened before and will never happen again!!!]
“Where (a media report) says we’re sweeping up the communications of civilians overseas that aren’t targets of collection systems is wrong,” the NSA’s director, Army Gen. Keith Alexander, told senators Thursday. “If our folks do that, we hold them accountable.”
At least six times the cases were reported to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, Ellard’s letter said. In some cases, U.S. prosecutors declined to take action but in nearly every case the employees were allowed to retire without punishment. [Yea, that's what usually happens - nothing] In one case, a worker was suspended without pay then retired; in another case, a worker’s promotion was cancelled; in two cases, military employees suffered a reduction in rank, extra duty and brief reduction in salary for two months.
Public concerns about how telephone and Internet surveillance data is handled by the NSA have intensified in the wake of leaks about the agency’s programs by former contract employee Edward Snowden. With the Senate readying to consider new limits on the NSA’s spying programs, national security officials have sought to boost confidence in their procedures. Senior officials have said they moved quickly to report and correct internal problems that led to the NSA’s accidental collection of 56,000 emails and other communications by Americans, and they insisted that willful abuse of surveillance data by officials is almost non-existent.
Grassley, who had asked Ellard last month to provide more information about the 12 violations, urged robust oversight of the secret programs. “We shouldn’t tolerate even one misuse of this program,” he said. [But our government masters will pretty much tolerate any all all crimes committed by the goons in the NSA]
Several cases clearly showed government officials using the surveillance system to probe for information about spouses or paramours. During a 2011 polygraph test, an official acknowledged tapping into surveillance data about his foreign girlfriend’s telephone number in 2004. The official also tried to retrieve data about his own phone but was prevented because internal mechanisms prevented queries on domestic phone numbers without authorization. The matter was referred to the Justice Department. The official retired in 2012 before internal disciplinary action could be taken.
In another case, the foreign girlfriend of a U.S official reported her suspicions that the official was listening to her telephone calls. An internal investigation found that the official had made internal surveillance queries on the phones of nine foreign women without authorization and had at times listened in on some phone conversations. The same official also collected data on a U.S. person’s phone.
The case was referred to prosecutors and the official resigned before internal discipline could be imposed.
I suspect that Jan Brewer is tough on crime to get the votes of the huge number of cops. The city of Phoenix alone has 3,000 Phoenix cops. That doesn't include all the other county, city, federal and other cops living in Phoenix.
While cops aren't any more patriotic then the rest of us, they do vote when there is money in it for them. Such as for initiatives that create more jobs for cops. And Initiatives that create higher pay and benefits for government bureaucrats.
Posted on September 27, 2013 4:28 pm by Laurie Roberts
No pardoning Gov. Jan Brewer’s cowardly clemency policy
It was May 2009 and Shannon Connely was asleep in his southwest Valley home when suddenly the sound of squealing tires and barking dogs awakened him.
Worried because of a recent burglary attempt, Connely grabbed his holstered handgun and ran outside to find a police officer.
The officer, who was looking for a missing child, drew his gun and ordered Connely to drop his weapon. Connely cursed, pointed out that his gun was holstered and ordered the officer off of his property. The officer shouted at him to drop it and lie down and Connely complied. He was promptly zapped with a Taser, then arrested.
Connely, a real estate agent who had never before had a run-in with the law, was offered probation if he would plead guilty to a felony. Instead, he opted to take his chances with a jury. Big mistake. He was convicted of aggravated assault and disorderly conduct and because of Arizona’s harsh mandatory sentencing laws, he would pay for his crime. And pay and pay.
The judge, Maricopa County Superior Court Commission Steven Lynch, had no choice but to give him 10½ years in prison. Even Lynch called the sentence “clearly excessive” and issued an order allowing Connely to quickly petition for clemency.
During his clemency hearing, Connely acknowledged his mistake and apologized and in April 2011, the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency recommended that his sentence be commuted to the seven months already served. The vote was unanimous.
Gov. Jan Brewer turned him down flat.
Today, Connely sits in prison in Safford. His record shows one disciplinary infraction – a minor grooming violation two years ago. For his crime, he will remain behind bars until December 2020.
Our tax dollars – and our government — at work.
No mercy, no second chances and for many inmates, not even a fair opportunity to be heard.
This week, we learned that Brewer has been tampering with the supposedly independent clemency board. In a federal lawsuit filed by a death row inmate, five former members of the board say that Brewer Chief of Staff Scott Smith repeatedly pressured them not to send the governor recommendations for clemency. When they did it anyway, three of them were ousted. Two others quit.
One former member, Marilyn Wilkens, says she was called into Smith’s office last year after the board recommended a lesser sentence for Robert Flibotte. Flibotte is a 74-year-old Payson realtor sentenced to 90 years in prison in 2011 after child pornography was found on his computer.
The board in January 2012 unanimously recommended reducing his sentence to five years, letting him out when he is 79, and lifetime probation.
“Mr. Smith was face-to-face with me, with about five inches separating, us,” Wilkens wrote, in a sworn statement accompanying the lawsuit. “He was shaking his finger at me and told me in a raised voice, almost yelling at me, that I voted to let a ‘sex offender’ go. He became very agitated, refusing to accept the tenants of my explanation….”
Brewer denied him clemency and three months after the vote on Flibotte, three members of the five-member board were ousted: Wilkens, who had been appointed by Brewer in 2010; Ellen Stenson, a 2007 Janet Napolitano appointee, and Duane Belcher, who had been the board’s chairman for 20 years.
All three believe they were dumped because of their votes to recommend clemency for Flibotte and certain other inmates. Two other appointees have since resigned, saying they, too, were told how to vote, though one of the two, Jesse Hernandez. quit over allegations of impropriety.
Brewer’s office denied there is any pressure to keep clemency requests from reaching her desk. “The governor’s office does not intervene in cases,” her spokesman wrote in an e-mail to The Republic.
Well, five members of the board – including three Brewer appointees – say differently.
Clearly, Brewer cherishes her reputation as being tough on crime. What elected politician doesn’t?
But you can’t govern by bumper sticker. Or you shouldn’t.
There’s a reason that Arizona has had since 1913 a system that offers a way to cut sentences short in certain exceptional cases.
Few, if any, of us would advocate the wholesale release of ax murderers. But most of us, in our saner moments, recognize that there are times when the system doles out injustice, times when, because of our humanity or simple common sense, a little compassion is called for.
It takes courage for a governor to grant clemency.
But to pressure a board so you’re never put in a position of having to make the call?
That’s the opposite of courage.
What part of the Constitution allows the FBI to investigate crimes in foreign countries like Kenya???
I suspect this is just some empire building by the FBI managers to create a worldwide jobs program for themselves!!!!
U.S. Sees Direct Threat in Attack at Kenya Mall
By NICHOLAS KULISH and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: September 25, 2013
NAIROBI, Kenya — Viewing the deadly siege at a shopping mall in Kenya as a direct threat to its security, the United States is deploying dozens of F.B.I. agents to investigate the wreckage, hoping to glean every piece of information possible to help prevent such a devastating attack from happening again, possibly even on American soil.
For years, the F.B.I. has been closely watching the Shabab, the Somali Islamist group that has claimed responsibility for the Nairobi massacre and recruited numerous Americans to fight and die — sometimes as suicide bombers — for its cause. [Again since when was the FBI given the power to investigate crimes in foreign countries???? Sounds like the FBI is creating a worldwide jobs program for itself]
The Shabab has already attacked most of the major actors trying to end the chaos in Somalia — the United Nations, Uganda, aid groups, the Somali government and now Kenya. The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars bankrolling anti-Shabab operations for years, and there is growing fear that the group could turn its sights on American interests more directly, one of the reasons the Obama administration is committing so many resources to the investigation in Kenya.
“We are in this fight together,” said Robert F. Godec, the American ambassador to Kenya. “The more we know about the planning that went into this, the way it was conducted, what was used, the people involved, the better we can protect America, too.”
Less than a day after the bloody standoff ended, more than 20 F.B.I. agents wearing flak jackets and helmets were combing through the wreckage strewn across the steps of the mall. Dozens more agents will be headed to Nairobi, American officials say. Some of them are members of the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force squad that investigates extremist groups operating in the Horn of Africa, a law enforcement official said.
Over the next few days, agents, including a full Evidence Response Team, will be collecting D.N.A., fingerprints and other biometric information, poring through surveillance footage and examining guns, laptops, cameras and computers — anything to gain insights into how the attack was carried out and the hierarchy, planning and structures behind the group, especially if they have any ties back to the United States.
American officials are mindful that Kenya, one of its closest allies in Africa, has become a precarious buffer zone between the United States and Islamist militants who have declared foreigners legitimate targets in their war.
The American government has learned the hard way what happens if it does not contain groups responsible for faraway attacks. In 1998, the then-relatively unknown group called Al Qaeda simultaneously attacked the United States embassies here and in Tanzania, killing hundreds and following up a few years later with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The Shabab militant group, which has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and taken responsibility for killing more than 60 civilians at the mall, is considered an especially dangerous threat because more than two dozen young American men are already learning terrorist tactics in Somalia. So far, this has been a one-way pipeline, but the fear is that some battle-hardened militants could come home with their American passports to strike on American soil.
“You never know when a terrorist attack in a faraway place could be a harbinger of something that could strike at the United States,” said Daniel Benjamin, a former Obama administration counterterrorism official. On Kenya, he said, “It’s a country that has a long history of being attacked by terrorists that are of real concern to the United States.”
Compounding matters, relations between the United States and Kenya had grown frosty before the attack because Kenya’s president has been indicted on charges of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. American officials here were trying to keep their distance from him, but now the two sides must work closely together.
As the mall attack showed, militants would not need to reach the United States to strike hard at American interests. Several Americans were injured in the four-day siege, though none were killed. French, British, Canadians, Chinese, Indians and many others died, most of them Kenyan.
The American government is concerned that the Shabab could target the thousands of Americans living in Kenya, working for companies like General Electric, the embassy or the enormous United Nations office here in the cosmopolitan capital. Tens of thousands of other Americans visit the nation’s game parks, beaches and other tourist attractions every year, according to the Kenyan government.
American officials say that several of the attackers may have escaped, posing as civilians and fleeing in the mayhem. The worry is that they may be planning future attacks here in Nairobi.
Wednesday was Day 1 of an investigation that may take weeks, even months, with the first priority establishing the identities of the 10 to 15 attackers who burst into the mall on Saturday with automatic weapons, shooting some people at random, questioning others about their religion and ruthlessly sorting individuals for execution.
Kenyan officials have said that some of the attackers may have been Somali-Americans, but Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Wednesday that there had been no confirmation of that. Another question is whether a British woman, Samantha Lewthwaite, known as the White Widow, was among the assailants.
Part of the mall was destroyed during the three-day effort to dislodge the terrorists, who had holed up in a supermarket with belt-fed machine guns that officials say were sneaked into the mall days before with the help of a colluding employee.
“The next phase really is making sure we know what’s under the rubble,” said a Kenyan government spokesman, Manoah Esipisu. “Forensic people need to be able to clear that rubble and examine the evidence beneath it.”
The massacre plot was hatched weeks or months ago on Somali soil by the Shabab’s “external operations arm,” according to American security officials. A team of English-speaking foreign fighters was carefully chosen for the target: Westgate, a gleaming upscale mall popular with expatriates and Nairobi’s rising middle class.
Kenya is considered one of the most promising countries in Africa and has become a hub for American interests, including the effort to contain Islamist extremism in the region, putting pressure on the United States to repair its strained relations with Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta.
“This incident has literally put Kenyatta and his deputy in the center stage of the war on terror,” said Peter Kagwanja, the chief executive of the Africa Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Nairobi. “America and the world have to contend with the aftermath of Nairobi.”
The United States urgently wants to decode the tactics of the assault. There is growing concern about the ease with which a few determined militants armed with automatic weapons could storm into a crowded area, kill many people very quickly and hold off government forces for so long. After the Mumbai killings in 2008, the F.B.I. sponsored training sessions for the hotel industry and other groups that could be soft targets for such attacks.
“One of the misconceptions is that we can let Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups stay abroad and not fight them there, and that we would be safe at home,” said Katherine Zimmerman, senior analyst at the Critical Threats Project of the American Enterprise Institute. “That’s really proven not to be the case.”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and William K. Rashbaum from New York.
Of course the issue here is how the government wastes our money.
Audit finds Army paid $16 million to deserters, AWOL soldiers
LOUISVILLE, Ky. Even as the Army faces shrinking budgets, an audit shows it paid out $16 million in paychecks over a 2 ?-year period to soldiers designated as AWOL or as deserters, the second time since 2006 the military has been dinged for the error.
A memo issued by Human Resources Command at Fort Knox, Ky., found that the Army lacked sufficient controls to enforce policies and procedures for reporting deserters and absentee soldiers to cut off their pay and benefits immediately. The oversight was blamed primarily on a failure by commanders to fill out paperwork in a timely manner.
The payments from 2010 to 2012 represent only a fraction of the Army's nearly $44 billion projected payroll for 2013, but auditors and a watchdog group derided the waste as government agencies grapple with the automatic federal spending cuts known as sequestration.
"In this current environment of scarce resources, this is unacceptable," auditors wrote in a July memo sent by the Department of Defense across the Army, including to the U.S. Army Deserter Information Point and Human Resources Command.
The Defense Department says 466 service members across all branches were listed as absent without leave or as deserters in 2012; the agency did not have a tally specific to the Army. However, the $16 million represents 9,000 individual direct deposit payments, suggesting at least some of the soldiers received several paychecks before the problem was corrected.
The audit marks the second time in the past seven years the Army has come under scrutiny for paying soldiers who did not report for duty when called up. The audit outlines what steps should be taken across the Army to ensure deserters and soldiers who are absent without leave don't get pay or benefits.
A more narrowly focused 2006 audit by the Government Accountability Office found the Army paid 68 soldiers about $684,000 while the soldiers were considered deserters. That review, by Gregory D. Kutz, the managing director of forensic audits and special investigations for the GAO, focused on the 1004th Quartermaster Company in Greensburg, Pa.
The audit issued in July called on Human Resources Command to establish standards for commanders to provide status updates of AWOL soldiers and deserters on a regular basis. The message also directs commanders throughout the Army to follow up on all in-transit soldiers who do not arrive on their report dates and to place a strong emphasis on the status of absentee soldiers.
Auditors found that commanders weren't filling out paperwork on absent soldiers in a timely manner, so the orders to stop pay weren't being processed and absent soldiers were still being paid. The latest audit comes as the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are projected to slash $52 billion from the defense budget for the 2014 fiscal year under automatic spending cuts that kicked in March 1.
The Army classifies a deserter as someone who drops from the rolls of a unit after being absent without authority for 30 or more consecutive days. Soldiers who join the military of another country, seek political asylum or live in a foreign country are also considered deserters.
Kutz included in the audit recommendations that the Army develop a strategy for tracking possible desertion cases and possibly initiating criminal actions against deserters who took unearned pay. The note in July reiterates some of Kutz's recommendations and points to new regulations requiring stricter tracking and processing of soldiers who don't report for duty.
"The purpose of this message is to reinforce current policy and actions to be taken by commanders and staff offices to alleviate the situation," the All Army Activities memo states.
U.S. Rep. C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, who was among four congressmen to request the 2006 audit, said he was troubled to see the problem persist particularly in light of the current financial and budget challenges the government faces. Ruppersberger, D-Md., said Army leadership has assured him that corrective actions are being taken, including efforts to recoup the money paid.
"Deserting our military is a serious offense, and these men and women - and the unit commanders in charge of the personnel paperwork - need to be held accountable," Ruppersberger said. "It's also unfair to the vast majority of troops putting their lives on the line and honorably serving our country every day."
An Army spokesman said AWOL soldiers or soldiers considered deserters must repay any earned benefits if they are dismissed from the military. Refusing to do so could lead to the debt being turned over to a collection agency. Soldiers who return to duty may have their wages garnished to cover the debt. A Defense Department spokesman knew of no similar audit for other branches of the military.
Sean Kennedy, director of research for the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, said the audit results were "pretty crazy." It appears there's little incentive to fix the problem, even though it has been pointed out multiple times, Kennedy said.
"It's a drop in the bucket compared to the larger Army bucket, but the GAO identified this years ago, and it was never fixed," Kennedy said. "Before the Army cries poor again, they should look internally for waste that can be eliminated. This is an example of that."
© 2013 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Ex-EPA official pleads guilty to theft; he also had claimed to work for CIA
By Ann E. Marimow and Lenny Bernstein, Published: September 27
A former high-level official at the Environmental Protection Agency admitted Friday that he stole nearly $900,000 from the government by pretending to work for the CIA in a plea agreement that raised questions about how top agency managers failed to detect the scheme since it began in 1994.
John C. Beale duped a series of supervisors, including top officials of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, disappearing from the office and explaining his absences by telling his bosses that he was doing top-secret work for the CIA and its “directorate of operations.”
He lied about contracting malaria (he didn’t) while he served in Vietnam (all his military service was in the United States) to obtain a parking space reserved for the disabled that cost the EPA $8,000 over three years. He took personal trips to Los Angeles for which he charged the government more than $57,000, according to new court filings.
In all, Beale was paid for 21 / 2 years of work he did not perform since early 2000 and received about $500,000 in “retention bonuses” he did not deserve for nearly two decades, according to court papers and interviews.
“To our knowledge, prior to [current EPA Administrator] Gina McCarthy expressing her concerns, no one at EPA ever checked to see if Mr. Beale worked for the CIA,” said Assistant Inspector General Patrick Sullivan, who led the investigation that included interviews of 40 people. Only one, an executive assistant, suspected Beale’s story of working for the clandestine service.
Nor did EPA personnel compare Beale’s travel vouchers, which said he was in places such as Boston and Seattle, with hotel receipts for the same dates that showed him in Bakersfield, Calif., where he has family.
Even during the probe, which began in March, Beale continued to insist that he could not be interviewed because of his work for the CIA, Sullivan said. Only when investigators offered to question him in a secure room at the agency’s Langley headquarters did he admit he had no connection to the CIA, Sullivan said.
For reasons the EPA cannot explain, Beale continued to draw a paycheck until April 30, 19 months after his retirement dinner cruise on the Potomac River and 23 months after he announced he would retire, according to Sullivan and court documents. Beale and his attorney declined to comment after the federal court hearing Friday.
The case has attracted political attention, in part because Beale was defrauding the agency when he worked for McCarthy, the new EPA administrator, when she headed the agency’s Air and Radiation office.
McCarthy started her job in 2009 and told investigators she began to suspect Beale in March 2012, Sullivan said. McCarthy, who is identified as “EPA Manager #2,” in court documents, eventually discovered that Beale was still receiving a paycheck long after she helped celebrate his retirement. She became EPA administrator this year.
McCarthy referred the matter to the EPA general counsel’s office. Instead of being transferred to the inspector general, it was referred to the EPA’s Office of Homeland Security, which has no investigative authority. That delayed the IG’s probe for months, said people familiar with the investigation.
Repeated calls and e-mails to EPA representatives were not returned Friday.
The top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, David Vitter (La.), said Friday that the case highlights a “major failing within EPA” and that “no direct actions have been taken to guarantee this kind of abuse won’t happen again.”
The committee’s chairman, Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) called Beale’s actions “outrageous” and praised the inspector general and McCarthy for “putting an end to his thievery.” Boxer has scheduled a briefing for Monday. Beale is scheduled to appear at a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing next week titled “Secret Agent Man?”
Beale, 64, was charged in August with stealing $886,186 in pay and bonuses. A senior policy adviser in the Air and Radiation office, he earned $164,700 when he retired in April. He has repaid the $886,186 to the EPA as part of his plea agreement but still owes a money judgment of $507,000. Beale, who until recently lived in Arlington County, faces up to three years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines.
Even though court documents trace Beale’s conduct to 2000, the IG’s office found that Beale’s deception began in 1989, when he falsely wrote on his employment application that he had worked for former senator John Tunney of California, Sullivan said. Tunney’s name was misspelled on the form, he said. Beale said he began the CIA ruse in 1994, Sullivan said, because he missed the limelight from his work on the Clean Air Act reauthorization from 1990 to 1993.
Early on at the EPA, Beale’s air-quality expertise led to many legitimate overseas trips to places such as China, South Africa and England, said people familiar with the case. His frequent international travel also allowed him to cultivate an aura of mystery, his former colleagues said.
When Beale started disappearing from the office in 2001, he told a person identified as “EPA manager #1” that he was assigned to a special advisory group working on a project with the Directorate of Operations at the CIA, according the court filing.
The manager agreed to Beale’s request to be out of the office one day a week for the CIA work, according to the statement of the offense.
In 2005, court documents say the same manager approved a long-term research project that Beale had proposed. Beale took five trips to Los Angeles to work on the project, which prosecutors said did not require travel. Beale stayed in Bakersfield and visited nearby family members. He was reimbursed more than $57,000 in travel expenses for work that was never produced.
The inspector general’s office identified “manager #1” as Jeffrey R. Holmstead, who was head of the Office of Air and Radiation from 2001 to 2005, during the administration of George W. Bush. Holmstead, a lawyer in Washington, said in an e-mail that he had “no recollection of approving [Beale’s] requests.”
“He did tell me that he had an assignment with the CIA that would sometimes take him out of the office, but I was never asked to approve this arrangement. Career employees are sometimes detailed to work at other agencies, and I assumed that Mr. Beale’s work at the CIA was done pursuant to such an arrangement.”
In 2008, Beale did not show up at the office for about six months, telling his managers that he was either working on a research project or for “Langley,” a reference to the CIA.
Throughout the scheme, Beale was receiving a 25 percent retention bonus that should have expired after three years, in 2003. Instead, he continued to receive the bonus through 2013, according to the court documents, and was among the highest paid, nonelected federal government employees. A close friend of Beale’s, his supervisor Robert Brenner, put him in for the bonus twice, Sullivan said.
In May 2011, Beale announced his retirement. The next month, he told McCarthy that his CIA work would keep him out of the office for long periods. Beale sent e-mails to McCarthy and others at the EPA during that time, saying he was traveling overseas and doing CIA work. In reality, Beale was at home or at his vacation house on Cape Cod, according to the plea agreement.
N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens
By JAMES RISEN and LAURA POITRAS
Published: September 28, 2013 58 Comments
WASHINGTON — Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials.
The spy agency began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in November 2010 to examine Americans’ networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes after N.S.A. officials lifted restrictions on the practice, according to documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.
The policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track” connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, according to an N.S.A. memorandum from January 2011. The agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners.
The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners.
N.S.A. officials declined to say how many Americans have been caught up in the effort, including people involved in no wrongdoing. The documents do not describe what has resulted from the scrutiny, which links phone numbers and e-mails in a “contact chain” tied directly or indirectly to a person or organization overseas that is of foreign intelligence interest.
The new disclosures add to the growing body of knowledge in recent months about the N.S.A.’s access to and use of private information concerning Americans, prompting lawmakers in Washington to call for reining in the agency and President Obama to order an examination of its surveillance policies. Almost everything about the agency’s operations is hidden, and the decision to revise the limits concerning Americans was made in secret, without review by the nation’s intelligence court or any public debate. As far back as 2006, a Justice Department memo warned of the potential for the “misuse” of such information without adequate safeguards.
An agency spokeswoman, asked about the analyses of Americans’ data, said, “All data queries must include a foreign intelligence justification, period.”
“All of N.S.A.’s work has a foreign intelligence purpose,” the spokeswoman added. “Our activities are centered on counterterrorism, counterproliferation and cybersecurity.”
The legal underpinning of the policy change, she said, was a 1979 Supreme Court ruling that Americans could have no expectation of privacy about what numbers they had called. Based on that ruling, the Justice Department and the Pentagon decided that it was permissible to create contact chains using Americans’ “metadata,” which includes the timing, location and other details of calls and e-mails, but not their content. The agency is not required to seek warrants for the analyses from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
N.S.A. officials declined to identify which phone and e-mail databases are used to create the social network diagrams, and the documents provided by Mr. Snowden do not specify them. The agency did say that the large database of Americans’ domestic phone call records, which was revealed by Mr. Snowden in June and caused bipartisan alarm in Washington, was excluded. (N.S.A. officials have previously acknowledged that the agency has done limited analysis in that database, collected under provisions of the Patriot Act, exclusively for people who might be linked to terrorism suspects.)
But the agency has multiple collection programs and databases, the former officials said, adding that the social networking analyses relied on both domestic and international metadata. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the information was classified.
The concerns in the United States since Mr. Snowden’s revelations have largely focused on the scope of the agency’s collection of the private data of Americans and the potential for abuse. But the new documents provide a rare window into what the N.S.A. actually does with the information it gathers.
A series of agency PowerPoint presentations and memos describe how the N.S.A. has been able to develop software and other tools — one document cited a new generation of programs that “revolutionize” data collection and analysis — to unlock as many secrets about individuals as possible.
The spy agency, led by Gen. Keith B. Alexander, an unabashed advocate for more weapons in the hunt for information about the nation’s adversaries, clearly views its collections of metadata as one of its most powerful resources. N.S.A. analysts can exploit that information to develop a portrait of an individual, one that is perhaps more complete and predictive of behavior than could be obtained by listening to phone conversations or reading e-mails, experts say.
Phone and e-mail logs, for example, allow analysts to identify people’s friends and associates, detect where they were at a certain time, acquire clues to religious or political affiliations, and pick up sensitive information like regular calls to a psychiatrist’s office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner or exchanges with a fellow plotter.
“Metadata can be very revealing,” said Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University. “Knowing things like the number someone just dialed or the location of the person’s cellphone is going to allow to assemble a picture of what someone is up to. It’s the digital equivalent of tailing a suspect.”
The N.S.A. had been pushing for more than a decade to obtain the rule change allowing the analysis of Americans’ phone and e-mail data. Intelligence officials had been frustrated that they had to stop when a contact chain hit a telephone number or e-mail address believed to be used by an American, even though it might yield valuable intelligence primarily concerning a foreigner who was overseas, according to documents previously disclosed by Mr. Snowden. N.S.A. officials also wanted to employ the agency’s advanced computer analysis tools to sift through its huge databases with much greater efficiency.
The agency had asked for the new power as early as 1999, the documents show, but had been initially rebuffed because it was not permitted under rules of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that were intended to protect the privacy of Americans.
A 2009 draft of an N.S.A. inspector general’s report suggests that contact chaining and analysis may have been done on Americans’ communications data under the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants, which began after the Sept. 11 attacks to detect terrorist activities and skirted the existing laws governing electronic surveillance.
In 2006, months after the wiretapping program was disclosed by The New York Times, the N.S.A.’s acting general counsel wrote a letter to a senior Justice Department official, which was also leaked by Mr. Snowden, formally asking for permission to perform the analysis on American phone and e-mail data. A Justice Department memo to the attorney general noted that the “misuse” of such information “could raise serious concerns,” and said the N.S.A. promised to impose safeguards, including regular audits, on the metadata program. In 2008, the Bush administration gave its approval.
A new policy that year, detailed in “Defense Supplemental Procedures Governing Communications Metadata Analysis,” authorized by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, said that since the Supreme Court had ruled that metadata was not constitutionally protected, N.S.A. analysts could use such information “without regard to the nationality or location of the communicants,” according to an internal N.S.A. description of the policy.
After that decision, which was previously reported by The Guardian, the N.S.A. performed the social network graphing in a pilot project for 1 ½ years “to great benefit,” according to the 2011 memo. It was put in place in November 2010 in “Sigint Management Directive 424” (sigint refers to signals intelligence).
In the 2011 memo explaining the shift, N.S.A. analysts were told that they could trace the contacts of Americans as long as they cited a foreign intelligence justification. That could include anything from ties to terrorism, weapons proliferation, international drug smuggling or espionage to conversations with a foreign diplomat or a political figure.
Analysts were warned to follow existing “minimization rules,” which prohibit the N.S.A. from sharing with other agencies names and other details of Americans whose communications are collected, unless they are necessary to understand foreign intelligence reports or there is evidence of a crime. The agency is required to obtain a warrant from the intelligence court to target a “U.S. person” — a citizen or legal resident — for actual eavesdropping.
The N.S.A. documents show that one of the main tools used for chaining phone numbers and e-mail addresses has the code name Mainway. It is a repository into which vast amounts of data flow daily from the agency’s fiber-optic cables, corporate partners and foreign computer networks that have been hacked.
The documents show that significant amounts of information from the United States go into Mainway. An internal N.S.A. bulletin, for example, noted that in 2011 Mainway was taking in 700 million phone records per day. In August 2011, it began receiving an additional 1.1 billion cellphone records daily from an unnamed American service provider under Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which allows for the collection of the data of Americans if at least one end of the communication is believed to be foreign.
The overall volume of metadata collected by the N.S.A. is reflected in the agency’s secret 2013 budget request to Congress. The budget document, disclosed by Mr. Snowden, shows that the agency is pouring money and manpower into creating a metadata repository capable of taking in 20 billion “record events” daily and making them available to N.S.A. analysts within 60 minutes.
The spending includes support for the “Enterprise Knowledge System,” which has a $394 million multiyear budget and is designed to “rapidly discover and correlate complex relationships and patterns across diverse data sources on a massive scale,” according to a 2008 document. The data is automatically computed to speed queries and discover new targets for surveillance.
A top-secret document titled “Better Person Centric Analysis” describes how the agency looks for 94 “entity types,” including phone numbers, e-mail addresses and IP addresses. In addition, the N.S.A. correlates 164 “relationship types” to build social networks and what the agency calls “community of interest” profiles, using queries like “travelsWith, hasFather, sentForumMessage, employs.”
A 2009 PowerPoint presentation provided more examples of data sources available in the “enrichment” process, including location-based services like GPS and TomTom, online social networks, billing records and bank codes for transactions in the United States and overseas.
At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday, General Alexander was asked if the agency ever collected or planned to collect bulk records about Americans’ locations based on cellphone tower data. He replied that it was not doing so as part of the call log program authorized by the Patriot Act, but said a fuller response would be classified.
If the N.S.A. does not immediately use the phone and e-mail logging data of an American, it can be stored for later use, at least under certain circumstances, according to several documents.
One 2011 memo, for example, said that after a court ruling narrowed the scope of the agency’s collection, the data in question was “being buffered for possible ingest” later. A year earlier, an internal briefing paper from the N.S.A. Office of Legal Counsel showed that the agency was allowed to collect and retain raw traffic, which includes both metadata and content, about “U.S. persons” for up to five years online and for an additional 10 years offline for “historical searches.”
James Risen reported from Washington and New York. Laura Poitras, a freelance journalist, reported from Berlin.
John McAfee reveals details on gadget to thwart NSA
By Tracey Kaplan
tkaplan@mercurynews.com
Posted: 09/28/2013 07:06:58 PM PDT
SAN JOSE -- John McAfee lived up to his reputation Saturday as tech's most popular wild child, electrifying an audience with new details of his plan to thwart the NSA's surveillance of ordinary Americans with an inexpensive, pocket-size gadget.
Dubbed "Decentral," the as-yet-unbuilt device will cost less than $100, McAfee promised the enthusiastic crowd of about 300 engineers, musicians and artists at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.
"There will be no way (for the government) to tell who you are or where you are," he said in an onstage interview with moderator Dan Holden at the inaugural C2SV Technology Conference + Music Festival.
And if the U.S. government bans its sale, "I'll sell it in England, Japan, the Third World. This is coming and cannot be stopped."
The ambitious -- some would say quixotic -- project is the latest chapter of McAfee's colorful life.
The anti-virus software pioneer's antics have included his widely publicized flight last year from Belize, where he remains wanted as a "person of interest" in the shooting death of his neighbor.
Even so, he remains an icon in the annals of Silicon Valley's history of entrepreneurship. In 1989, he founded the anti-virus software company that still bears his name and once was worth $100 million. In 1994, he ended his relationship with the company and moved to Colorado.
During the interview, the 68-year-old with spiky black hair tipped blond, who wore light blue cargo pants and a black sweatshirt, remarked on a wide range of topics, from how quickly he gets bored once one of his creations comes to fruition (including the software security company he founded) to how yoga helped him 30 years ago to quit using drugs, including his favorite (psychedelic mushrooms).
It was a talk bound to appeal to the young audience, which broke into frequent applause. Among the group was his new 30-year-old wife, Janice Dyson. She said in a brief interview
afterward with this newspaper that she is a former stripper. The couple met in Miami, where McAfee went after being deported from Guatemala.
"I keep him grounded," she said.
McAfee outlined what some might regard as a pie-in-the-sky plan to finish the first prototype of the Decentral in six months. He said the gadget is called Decentral because by communicating with smartphones, tablets and other devices, it will create decentralized, floating and moving local networks that can't be penetrated by government spy agencies.
The design is in place already for a version whose range will be three blocks in the city and a quarter mile in the country, he said. The device will be compatible with both Android and iPhones.
As far as consumers' appetite for such a gizmo, he said, "I cannot imagine one college student in the world who will not stand in line to get one."
Commuters will also find it useful, he said. Neighborhoods will be better able to fight crime because Decentral will include an option that sends an alert if there is a burglary or other crime.
McAfee said the idea for the device came to him well before computer analyst and whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked National Security Agency documents that exposed widespread monitoring of U.S. citizens' phone calls and Internet communications.
But with Snowden's actions, "it became the right time" to make it real, he said.
At the end of the 75-minute discussion, McAfee gamely took questions from the audience about everything from what advice he'd give teens (do what you love) to what he fears (his wife, he joked). In response to a question about marijuana, he made clear he doesn't embrace every aspect of the youth culture.
He said he liked pot users when he sold drugs decades ago because their "lives never go anywhere and they remain customers," adding, "Marijuana is a drug of illusion -- it creates the illusion that you're doing great things when all you're doing is sitting on the sofa growing a beard."
McAfee also reiterated that he never killed anyone in Belize and fled after angering the authorities by refusing to pay a $2 million bribe.
There seemed to be intense interest Saturday in McAfee's
John McAfee, right, speaks with Dan Holden at the "Fireside Chat with John McAfee" during the C2SV Technology Conference + Music Festival at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2013. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group) ( LiPo Ching )
current plans. One man asked whether Decentral essentially creates a "dark Web," or part of the Internet that can no longer be accessed by conventional means.
Yes, he said.
Will the privacy it affords allow criminals and others to evade the authorities, another wanted to know.
"It will of course be used for nefarious purposes," he said, "just like the telephone is."
Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482.
Vice Admiral Is Suspended in Gambling Investigation
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ and RAVI SOMAIYA
Published: September 28, 2013
A vice admiral who is second in command at the United States Strategic Command, which oversees nuclear war-fighting forces for the military, has been suspended amid an investigation into his possible involvement in illegal gambling, officials said on Saturday.
The officer, Vice Adm. Timothy M. Giardina, is a highly decorated sailor with more than three decades in the Navy. The suspension occurred on Sept. 3, but was not announced publicly, said Capt. Pamela Kunze, the command’s spokeswoman.
Captain Kunze would not comment further on the circumstances surrounding the suspension, citing a continuing investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
The Strategic Command was first alerted about the issue in mid-July. A month earlier, Admiral Giardina became the target of an inquiry being conducted by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation into possible use of counterfeit gambling chips at the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa, said David Dales, the head of the Southwest division of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.
Mr. Dales said the criminality in question involved poker at the casino, but said he could provide no further information. The agency’s investigation is still open and no state charges have been filed against Admiral Giardina, Mr. Dales said.
It was not clear whether Admiral Giardina’s actions compromised national security or the operations of the Strategic Command.
The commander of the Strategic Command, General C. Robert Kehler, has submitted a recommendation to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Admiral Giardina be reassigned, Captain Kunze said. It has not been determined what, if any, additional actions will be taken. The leadership of the Strategic Command is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
The Strategic Command, based at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, oversees a web of military efforts including the military’s space and cyberwarfare operations. It also controls the country’s nuclear arsenal.
Admiral Giardina, a career submarine officer, assumed his duties at the Strategic Command in December 2011. Before that, he was the deputy commander and chief of staff of the Pacific Fleet. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1979.
He was scheduled to rotate out of his position at Strategic Command later this year. In early July, President Obama appointed an Air Force general to replace Admiral Giardina.
Tim Giardina Suspended: No. 2 U.S. Nuke Commander Under Investigation
By ROBERT BURNS 09/28/13 06:10 PM ET EDT AP
WASHINGTON — The No. 2 officer at the military command in charge of all U.S. nuclear war-fighting forces is suspected in a case involving counterfeit gambling chips at a western Iowa casino and has been suspended from his duties, officials said.
Navy Vice Adm. Tim Giardina has not been arrested or charged, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation special agent David Dales said Saturday. The state investigation is ongoing.
Giardina, deputy commander at U.S. Strategic Command, was suspended on Sept. 3 and is under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, a Strategic Command spokeswoman said.
The highly unusual action against a high-ranking officer at Strategic Command was made more than three weeks ago but not publicly announced at that time. The command is located at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Neb.
Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler, who heads Strategic Command, suspended Giardina, according to the command's top spokeswoman, Navy Capt. Pamela Kunze. Giardina is still assigned to the command but is prohibited from performing duties related to nuclear weapons and other issues requiring a security clearance, she said.
Kehler has recommended to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Giardina be reassigned, Kunze said. Giardina has been the deputy commander of Strategic Command since December 2011. He is a career submarine officer and prior to starting his assignment there was the deputy commander and chief of staff at U.S. Pacific Fleet.
DCI agents stationed at the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa, discovered the counterfeit chips, Dales said. He would not say when the discovery was made or how much in counterfeit chips was found, only that "it was a significant monetary amount."
Council Bluffs is located across the Missouri River from Omaha.
"We were able to detect this one pretty quickly and jump on it," Dales said. He declined to give specifics on how authorities determined that casino chips had been counterfeited or how Giardina might have been involved.
Strategic Command oversees the military's nuclear fighter units, including the Navy's nuclear-armed submarines and the Air Force's nuclear bombers and nuclear land-based missiles.
Kunze said Strategic Command did not announce the suspension because Giardina remains under investigation and action on Kehler's recommendation that Giardina be reassigned is pending. The suspension was first reported by the Omaha World-Herald.
Kunze said a law enforcement investigation of Giardina began June 16. Kehler became aware of this on July 16, and the following day he asked the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to begin a probe.
The suspension is yet another blow to the military's nuclear establishment. Last spring the nuclear missile unit at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., pulled 17 launch control officers off duty after a problematic inspection and later relieved of duty the officer in charge of training and proficiency.
In August a nuclear missile unit at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., failed a nuclear safety and security inspection; nine days later an officer in charge of the unit's security forces was relieved of duty.
___
Associated Press writer Margery A. Beck in Omaha, Neb., contributed to this report.
Court to debate right to grow own medicinal marijuana
Posted: Wednesday, October 2, 2013 5:30 pm
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
PHOENIX — Medical marijuana patients could learn later this month if they have a constitutional right to grow their own weed.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper said Wednesday she will consider on Oct. 18 a bid by the Department of Health Services to have the lawsuit thrown out. Assistant Attorney General Gregory Falls hopes to convince her that nothing in the Arizona Constitution about the rights of patients to choose their own health care extends to making their own drugs.
If Cooper doesn't buy that argument, she is ready for the next step: She scheduled an Oct. 21 hearing to allow Michael Walz, the attorney for two medical marijuana patients, to tell her why she should order state Health Director Will Humble to let them have their plants.
If Walz ultimately succeeds, the implications go far beyond these two men. It would pave the way for similar rights for the approximately 40,000 individuals who already have been granted permits to possess the drug but now are required to purchase their supply from one of the state's nearly 100 state-regulated dispensaries.
At issue is what Walz said is a conflict between the Medical Marijuana Act that voters enacted in 2010 and a separate constitutional amendment, also approved by voters, two years later.
The 2010 law allows those with a doctor's recommendation to obtain up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks. It also envisioned dispensaries around the state.
That law also allows anyone not within 25 miles of a dispensary to grow up to 12 plants at any one time. And since no dispensaries were operating, every cardholder initially got that right.
But Humble said that now virtually all Arizonans are within that 25-mile radius. So he is denying grow rights to individuals as they renew their annual permits.
Walz, however, points to a 2012 constitutional amendment which overrules any law that requires anyone to “participate in any health care system.” And that, he argued, means individuals can't be forced to give up the cheaper option of growing their own plants.
“People are legally entitled, if their doctor gives them certification, to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes,” Walz said Wednesday.
“Many people cannot afford the prices that are charged by dispensaries,” he continued.”Therefore, they need to be able to grow their marijuana for themselves.”
And Walz said that, for some patients, the strain of marijuana is crucial.
“A particular strain may be effective to treat their specific condition and they need that strain,” Walz argued. “They can't depend on a dispensary to make the effort of providing a specific strain for any particular person.”
Humble isn't buying the argument — and not only because he rejects the idea that the Arizona Constitution guarantees individuals the right to make their own regulated medicine. He pointed out that voters themselves approved the provision in the 2010 law, which says the right to grow disappears once there is an available dispensary.
Walz dismissed that as irrelevant.
“I don't know that the voters were aware of that specific provision,” he said.
“They clearly were aware that some patients would be able to grow,” Walz said. “As far as when and how many of those rights would be extinguished, I don't think the voters had a clue.”
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Vietnamese freedom fighter dies!!!
http://www.azcentral.com/news/free/20131004vietnam-general-giap-dies.html
Vietnamese general who pushed out French, US dies at 102
By Margie Mason And Chris Brummitt Associated Press Fri Oct 4, 2013 11:25 AM
HANOI, Vietnam — Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the brilliant and ruthless commander who led a ragtag army of guerrillas to victory in Vietnam over first the French and then the Americans, died Friday. The last of the country’s old-guard revolutionaries was 102.
A national hero, Giap enjoyed a legacy second only to that of his mentor, founding president and independence leader Ho Chi Minh.
Giap died in a military hospital in the capital of Hanoi, where he had spent nearly four years because of illnesses, according to a government official and a person close to him. Both spoke on condition of anonymity before the death was announced in state-controlled media.
Known as the “Red Napoleon,” Giap commanded guerrillas who wore sandals made of car tires and lugged artillery piece by piece over mountains to encircle and crush the French army at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The unlikely victory — still studied at military schools — led to Vietnam’s independence and hastened the collapse of colonialism across Indochina and beyond.
Giap then defeated the U.S.-backed South Vietnam government in April 1975, reuniting a country that had been split into communist and noncommunist states. He regularly accepted heavy combat losses to achieve his goals.
“No other wars for national liberation were as fierce or caused as many losses as this war,” Giap told The Associated Press in 2005 — one of his last known interviews with foreign media on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the former South Vietnamese capital.
“But we still fought because for Vietnam, nothing is more precious than independence and freedom,” he said, repeating a famous quote by Ho Chi Minh.
Giap remained sharp and well-versed in current events until he was hospitalized. Well into his 90s, he entertained world leaders at his shady colonial-style home in Hanoi.
Although widely revered in Vietnam, Giap was the nemesis of millions of South Vietnamese who fought alongside U.S. troops and fled their homeland after the war, including the many staunchly anti-communist refugees who settled in the United States.
Born Aug. 25, 1911, in central Vietnam’s Quang Binh province, Giap became active in politics in the 1920s and worked as a journalist before joining the Indochinese Communist Party. He was jailed briefly in 1930 for leading anti-French protests and later earned a law degree from Hanoi University.
He fled French police in 1940 and met Ho Chi Minh in southwestern China before returning to rural northern Vietnam to recruit guerrillas for the Viet Minh, a forerunner to the southern insurgency later known as the Viet Cong.
During his time abroad, his wife was arrested by the French and died in prison. He later remarried and had five children.
In 1944, Ho Chi Minh called on Giap to organize and lead guerrilla forces against Japanese invaders in World War II. After Japan surrendered to Allied forces the next year, the Viet Minh continued their fight for independence from France.
Giap was known for his fiery temper and as a merciless strategist, but also for being a bit of a dandy. Old photos show him reviewing his troops in a white suit and snappy tie, in sharp contrast to Ho Chi Minh, clad in shorts and sandals.
Giap never received any formal military training, joking that he attended the military academy “of the bush.”
At Dien Bien Phu, his Viet Minh army surprised elite French forces by surrounding them. Digging miles of trenches, the Vietnamese dragged artillery over steep mountains and slowly closed in during the bloody, 56-day battle that ended with French surrender on May 7, 1954.
“If a nation is determined to stand up, it is very strong,” Giap told foreign journalists in 2004 prior to the battle’s 50th anniversary. “We are very proud that Vietnam was the first colony that could stand up and gain independence on its own.”
It was the final act that led to French withdrawal and the Geneva Accords that partitioned Vietnam into north and south in 1956. It paved the way for war against Saigon and its U.S. sponsors less than a decade later.
The general drew on his Dien Bien Phu experience to create the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a clandestine jungle network that snaked through neighboring — and ostensibly neutral — Laos and Cambodia to supply his troops fighting on southern battlefields.
Against U.S. forces with sophisticated weapons and B-52 bombers, Giap’s guerrillas prevailed again. But more than 1 million of his troops died in what is known in Vietnam as the “American War.”
“We had to use the small against the big; backward weapons to defeat modern weapons,” Giap said. “At the end, it was the human factor that determined the victory.”
Historian Stanley Karnow, who interviewed Giap in Hanoi in 1990, quoted him as saying: “We were not strong enough to drive out a half-million American troops, but that wasn’t our aim. Our intention was to break the will of the American government to continue the war.”
Giap had been largely credited with devising the 1968 Tet Offensive, a series of surprise attacks on U.S. strongholds in the south by Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces during lunar new year celebrations. Newer research, however, suggests that Giap had opposed the attacks, and his family has confirmed he was out of the country when they began.
The Tet Offensive shook U.S. confidence, fueled anti-war sentiment and prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to announce that he would not seek re-election. But it took another seven years for the war to be won.
On April 30, 1975, communist forces marched through Saigon with tanks, bulldozing the gates of what was then known as Independence Palace.
“With the victory of April 30, slaves became free men,” Giap said. “It was an unbelievable story.”
It came at a price for all sides: the deaths of as many as 3 million communists and civilians, an estimated 250,000 South Vietnamese troops and 58,000 Americans.
Throughout most of the war, Giap served as defense minister, armed forces commander and a senior member of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party, but he was slowly elbowed from the center of power after Ho Chi Minh’s death in 1969. The glory for victory in 1975 went not to Giap, but to Gen. Van Tien Dung, chief of the general staff.
Giap lost the defense portfolio in 1979 and was dropped from the powerful Politburo three years later. He stepped down from his last post, as deputy prime minister, in 1991.
Despite losing favor with the government, the thin, white-haired man became even more beloved in Vietnam as he continued to speak out. He retired in Hanoi as a national treasure, writing his memoirs and attending functions — always wearing green or eggshell-colored military uniforms with gold stars across the shoulders.
He held news conferences, reading from handwritten notes and sometimes answering questions in French to commemorate war anniversaries. He invited foreign journalists to his home for meetings with high-profile visitors and often greeted a longtime American female AP correspondent in Hanoi with kisses on both cheeks.
He kept up with world news and offered advice in 2004 for U.S. troops fighting in Iraq.
“Any forces that wish to impose their will on other nations will certainly face failure,” he told reporters.
Among the foreign dignitaries he received was friend and fellow communist revolutionary Fidel Castro of Cuba. In 2003, they sat in Giap’s home chatting and laughing beneath a portrait of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union.
The general’s former nemesis, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, visited in 1995. He asked about a disputed chapter of the Vietnam War, the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident in which two U.S. Navy destroyers were purportedly fired upon by North Vietnamese boats. It’s the event that gave the U.S. Congress justification for escalating the war.
Later, many questioned whether the attack actually occurred. During his visit, McNamara asked Giap what happened that night. He replied: “Absolutely nothing.”
At age 97, Giap took a high-profile role in a debate over the proposed expansion of a bauxite mine that he said posed environmental and security risks, in part because it was to be operated by a Chinese company in the restive Central Highlands. He also protested the demolition of Hanoi’s historic parliament house, Ba Dinh Hall. Both projects, however, went ahead as planned.
Giap celebrated his 100th birthday in 2011. He was too weak and ill to speak, but he signed a card thanking his “comrades” for their well-wishes. Even then, he continued to be briefed every few days about international and national events.
Late in life, Giap encouraged warmer relations between Vietnam and the U.S., which re-established ties in 1995 and have become close trading partners. Vietnam has also recently looked to the U.S. military as a way to balance China’s growing power in the disputed South China Sea.
“We can put the past behind,” Giap said in 2000. “But we cannot completely forget it.”
———
Mason, who reported from Jakarta, Indonesia, covered Vietnam for the AP from 2003-12 and met Giap on several occasions.
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Health-care law: Insuring young adults critical to success, experts say
Translation - Young healthy adults are expected to pay for the medical bills of us sick old farts.
Sadly Obamacare is just another government welfare program for doctors, hospitals and other corporations in the medical industry.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/20131009obamacare-insuring-young-adults-critical.html
Health-care law: Insuring young adults critical to success, experts say
By Ken Alltucker The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Oct 13, 2013 12:55 AM
Exhausted, feverish and out of breath, Randall Fields celebrated his 21st birthday in a hospital emergency room.
But the Estrella Mountain Community College student’s two-day stay for treatment of pneumonia wasn’t what worried him the most.
Fields soon discovered the financial setbacks a young adult can face when saddled with unexpected medical expenses. His bills from the hospital and doctors surpassed $15,000, a difficult burden for a student earning $9 an hour as a part-time fitness-and-wellness ambassador.
“The whole time I was thinking, ‘How am I going to pay for this?’ ” said Fields, who was uninsured at the time.
Fields, now 23, secured health-insurance coverage when his mother landed a new job with benefits, but unpaid doctors’ bills from his illness two years ago still dog him even though the hospital has forgiven the bulk of his charges. He now encourages his uninsured peers to get coverage either through the state’s Medicaid expansion or the new federal online marketplace.
Fields isn’t the only one who recommends young people get health insurance. Uninsured adults in their 20s or 30s are considered a pivotal group to sign up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the national law that aims to extend health insurance to most Americans.
Census figures estimate 149,000 uninsured Arizonans between 18 and 34 may be eligible for Medicaid coverage, and an additional 131,000 could purchase subsidized health insurance through the new online marketplace, healthcare.gov.
Experts say that participation by young, healthy adults is critical to making the law work because that group will help spread the risk. Health-insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to sick people or charge significantly more for older adults, while young adults typically use less health care. If the new marketplaces attract a disproportionate share of older, sicker adults, health-insurance costs could become less affordable for all.
But some experts question whether enough young adults will sign up. Polls suggest that group is less likely to know about the law’s requirements, the subsidies that are available to purchase insurance, and the penalties for failure to comply. Many are unfamiliar with confusing insurance terms such as premiums, copays, deductibles and networks. Still others may elect to simply pay the penalty, which in 2014 is the greater of $95 or 1 percent of income. The penalty escalates to $695 or 2.5 percent of income in 2016.
The Obama administration wants to sign up at least 2.7 million young adults for the health-care law’s first year. Data released last week by Maryland and Connecticut — both states running their own marketplaces — show that young adults have been the most prolific age group to either apply for coverage or register as insurance shoppers. Arizona is on the federal online marketplace, which has released no data and has been plagued by glitches during its first two weeks.
A 2010 study by the Phoenix non-profit St. Luke’s Health Initiatives shows that 28 percent of Arizona adults between 18 and 28 did not have health insurance — the highest uninsured age group among all Arizonans.
“Younger people are more difficult to entice in both the marketplace and Medicaid,” said Kim VanPelt, of St. Luke’s Health Initiatives, which is coordinating outreach to uninsured Arizonans. “They often think they don’t need health coverage. They see it at the bottom of the list of priorities.”
Targeting the young
While other states have big budgets to encourage uninsured adults to sign up, Arizona is attempting to get the word out on a shoestring. Arizona non-profits received $5.4 million in federal grants to hire people to educate and answer questions for uninsured consumers who may be eligible for coverage, either through the marketplace or Medicaid.
Local and national groups are targeting outreach to young adults at community health centers and college campuses and through social media. Last week, Arizona Public Interest Research Group and a Washington, D.C.-based group, Young Invincibles, courted students at community-college campuses in the Valley.
“A lot of people don’t even know there are options out there for them,” said Erin Hemlin, national organizing and program manager for Young Invincibles, which borrows its name from a term describing healthy young adults who feel they don’t need insurance. “We want to give a young person all the information they need to make a decision.”
More young adults already have health insurance today under the health law’s provision that allows them to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26. Those who can’t get coverage through their parents may be eligible under the state’s Medicaid expansion or the new marketplace plans. Enrollment started Oct. 1 and lasts through March 31.
Hemlin said outreach will emphasize the importance of coverage not just to young adults’ health but also to their financial futures. Young Invincibles has no projections on how many young Arizonans will get coverage, but Hemlin said states like Arizona, with large numbers of uninsured young adults, are considered crucial to the group’s efforts.
Private insurers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, too, are wooing young adults with ads and marketing campaigns. Blue Cross has placed kiosks in grocery and chain drugstores, purchased ads over the Pandora Internet music station, sponsored Arizona’s university sports teams and conducted in-game promotions.
Affordability is key
Other experts and studies suggest that affordability will be the most important factor determining young adults’ coverage.
“It’s really the costs that they are concerned about,” said Peter Cunningham of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Studying Health System Change, who authored one study. “It’s ultimately going to come down to whether they can find coverage that is affordable for them.”
That study points out young adults have different views on whether insurance is necessary. Young adults who consider themselves risk takers are less likely to see the need than peers who describe themselves as risk-averse.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said metro Phoenix residents can choose from 111 health-insurance plans at healthcare.gov. The rates vary significantly, with plans tiered in four categories based on the amount of coverage. A bronze plan covers 60 percent of costs; silver, 70 percent; gold, 80 percent; and platinum, 90 percent. “Catastrophic” plans will offer bare-bones coverage.
HHS said with tax credits that subsidize coverage, a 27-year-old Arizonan with an income of $25,000 will pay $120 a month for the least-expensive bronze plan and $145 a month for the second least-expensive silver plan.
The HHS analysis did not compare rates offered in the marketplace to those that young adults were charged before the law took effect. The law limits how much insurers can charge based on age to a 3-to-1 ratio. In other words, if an insurer charges a 62-year-old $600 per month, it must charge a 21-year-old at least $200 per month for a comparable plan.
“If you look at the raw costs, their premiums are going up substantially” for young adults, said Michael Malasnik, an insurance broker in Avondale.
Still, even though the prices of insurance plans will increase, most young adults will pay substantially less after federal subsidies kick in. The sliding-scale subsidies are tax credits that help reduce the cost of monthly premiums for individuals who earn up to $45,960, with more generous subsidies for those who earn less.
Some insurance-industry professionals expect young adults ages 18 to 34 will decide whether to buy coverage based on their circumstances. An early-30s couple with a newborn may be more likely to purchase coverage than a young man in his late teens or early 20s.
Wesley Heath, 19, of Phoenix, is healthy and isn’t sure he can afford coverage. The Arizona State University sophomore is seeking a part-time job at the Tilted Kilt restaurant chain to help pay for living expenses. “It will be hard to do it because I’m not on a salary or anything,” said Heath.
Since the new marketplaces started enrollment this month, Malasnik said people in their 50s and 60s have shown more interest than younger adults in purchasing coverage.
“We’re not getting a rush of young adults,” said Malasnik, who is brokering policies on behalf of Meritus among other insurers. “We are getting the 50-and-above crowd. They have been killed with rates and have had issues qualifying, so they are first out of the gate.”
Seeking coverage
Jeremy Stubbs of Phoenix has been without health insurance the past three years, but he sees the need now that he is 36. He thought about buying coverage through the marketplace. Like many other consumers since enrollment began, he could not access the website, so he enrolled in a plan through his employer, Starbucks. Stubbs, an ASU political-science major, said coverage will cost him $51 from his check every other week. When his new insurance starts, he plans to visit a doctor for a checkup.
“I had to budget tight to make it work,” Stubbs said, adding that many young adults don’t place a high priority on health-insurance coverage. “I think a lot of friends just think nothing is ever going to happen to them.”
Fields, the Estrella Mountain student, said his hospital stay was an eye-opener. Although he has insurance now, he is still paying doctors’ bills, which were sent to a collections agency. Fields said he has not pulled his credit report but believes he is hampered finding another job.
“You never know what the future will bring,” Fields said. “You need that safety net to help you or you’ll get a big bill afterward.”
Put NSA in a narrower box
Robb should be writing that the criminals in the NSA who violated our 4th Amendment rights should be put in prison. Same goes for the members of the US Senate and US House who supported the unconstitutional Patriot Act which is just an end run around the 4th Amendment.
Microsoft outlines 66,539 account requests from law enforcement
No, I am not paranoid - the government IS SPYING ON YOU!!!!!
NSA watchdog: Employees spied on lovers
Source
Draconian prison sentences for trivial crimes???
Governor Jan Brewer doesn't pardon anybody!!!!!
Draconian prison sentences for trivial crimes???
FBI investigating shoot out at mall in Kenya
FBI investigating shoot out at mall in Kenya
Army paid $16 million to deserters, AWOL soldiers
Of course if you ask me I would rather have them deserting then murdering innocent civilians and freedom fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course that's on the issue of the morality of the current illegal and unconstitutional American wars.
Ex-EPA official pleads guilty to stealing $900K
Source
N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens
I drive a foreign made Volkswagen and eat lots of Mexican food. I suspect that is justification for the goons at the NSA to spy on me. At least with the convoluted, cockamamie logic the NSA uses to justify flushing the 4th Amendment down the toilet and spying on Americans.
John McAfee reveals details on gadget to thwart NSA
John McAfee seems to be able to shovel the BS as well as any professional politician does so I am not sure if this is something that is real or if
John McAfee just wants to remove some money from your wallet.
No. 2 U.S. Nuke Commander Under Investigation
Admiral Giardina is being investigated for using counterfeit gambling chips at the Horseshoe Casino
Court to debate right to grow own medicinal marijuana
They want to remove the 25 mile limit for growing medical marijuana!!!
Source
Steve Benson - Gun Grabber
While Steve Benson may have his act together when it
comes to realizing that God is a bunch of superstitious nonsense
he still has to figure out that guns are the solution to the problem of
government. In this
cartoon
Steve Benson shows he is a gun grabber.
Non Sequitur - Danae & Jeffery get Pinged by NSA thugs????
Use to make a web page on this
photos
Previous articles on the American War Machine.
More articles on the American War Machine.