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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 5, 1976)
Itrs France» Schoen-Newopcper Poo» U n iv e r s it y o f Oregon L ib r a r y tu s e n c , Oregon V W J Austerity hits county services T h . U.S. Environment«! Protection Agency h a. eat off fund, to the City ol Salem'. 11« million aewerage plant becauae ef the prime contractor. Butler Con.truetion ol Salt Lake City, laded to nee minority subcontractor * in the project. The action was requested by the Northweet Minority (o n tra c to r. m rr will be held Friday to negotiate an agreement. PORTLAND OBSERVER Voi. « No. 12 Portland, Oregon Thuraday. February 5. 197« 10« P«r c* f >7 Concordia celebrates Black History DR. ERNEST HARTTOC One of the major Black History Week events in Portland is Concordia College’s third annual Black Awareness Week. February 8th through 15th. Numerous events are planned throughout the week, involving studenta, faculty and guesta. The week's activities begin on Sunday, February 8th at 3:00 p.m. with a Soul Food Banquet. The banquet will feature young peoples' choirs from three local Black churches. A keynote address will be given by II J. Belton Hamilton, Jr., U.S. Administrative Judge for the Department of Health. Education and Welfare. A series of films on various dimensions of Black history will be shown Monday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Discus sions will follow each film. On Thursday, February 12th. at 11:00 a.m Dr. Ernest Hartzog. Assistant Superintendent of the Portland Public Schools, School District No. 1, will address the rampus community. Climaxing the week's activities on Sunday. February 15th at 8:00 p/n. is a concert by Paul Hill at the Hilton Hotel. M r Hill is an accomplished songwriter and singer from I xm Angeles, California. Two of his songs. "Lean On Me" and “I’ll Be There" are million record sellers. He declined a $600,000 recording contract with Motown Records to teach first graders in Inglewood. California. “We are extending an invitation to the public to come and celebrate with us at the contributions Blacks have made," stated Kozell Gilmore, Director of the Minority Affairs Office and coordinator of the week. Gilmore noted that one of the reasons why whites have such little appeciation for Blacks is their failure to recognize the contributions Blacks have made to this country. “We celebrate Black Awareness Week so that all people realize the contributions Blacks have made to the development of our country.” The depression has hit the Multnomah County Department of Human Re sources, which haa been asked to reduce its budget by 2.5 million for the 1975197€ fiscal year. These cuts do not yet reflect President Ford's austerity budget, an nounced in hit recent State of the Union address, but is necessary to bring the county bud yet into balance by June 30th, 1976. According to Oregon law, the state and local governments must operate within available funds. For many years Multnomah County had a tax surplus, wca able to meet its obligations and hold a contingency fund in the banks, drawing interest. In the last few years the contingency fund has been decreased, and this year it must be used to meet budget costs. As is usually the case, social services must bear the brunt of the budget ruts. The customary method to save money has been to consolidate programs, then rut the staff. One of the major factors in the shortage of funds is the changeover from social programs receiving direct federal funds to revenue sharing, where the states receive grants of money and can use them as they please. * Both Multnomah County and the City of Portland have used money that could have gone into social services for other programs. Observers close to the Department of Human Resources point out that no matter wha' money saving cuts are made, the taxpayers will have to pay in the end and the poor will bear increased suffering. "When the public health nurse can't visit the elderly in their homes and when they can't get proper health care, they will go to hospitals and nursing homes and the taxpayers will pay for their care. “When the Detox center is closed, alcoholics will be in jail, where costs are higher, or will be on the streets. "When health care and nutrition services are rut drastically, rommunic able disease will increase. "There is just no way for the taxpayer to avoid paying the bill. These cuts only make the bill higher in the tong run. and add to the suffering of the poor." The Department of Human Resources has submitted proposed ruts and haa left job vancancies unfilled. Some employees of the H.R. wonder when this department must absorb a great portion of the loss, while others, such as the District Attorney's office continue to hire. The Department of Human Services took severe cuts in 1974, so the proposed cuts are not a true reflection of the real crisis in social services. The effect of the ruts are much more serious than most obversers suspect. Not only will $2.5 million in !m*«l dollars be lost to social service programs, but the withdrawal of this local money will cut off approxi mately $1 million in federal matching money that would have come into the community. The first round of proposed cuts are: • Veterans Program - elimination. The Veterans Program offers counselling and emergency assistance to veterans. It was cut from $100.000 and six counselors to $15,000 and two counselors in 1974. now it will be eliminated. a Public Guardian cot by 31 percent or savings of $15,000. The Public- Guardian services provides legal guard ians for persons who are unable to handle their own money and whose estates are too small to warrant hiring an attorney. • RAB (««tract - drug program to be picked up by the state. Savings of $6,000. • Family Education Center - elimi nated, savings of $5,000. Offers parental training and guidance. • Community Coordinators -- elimi nated, saves $102,968. These are Quadrant managers who man neighbor hood offices and facilitate communication between persons needing services and the programs. a Law Enforcement Counselling - elim inated, savin gs $10,000. Thia program provides training in human relations problems (marital, family prob lems. neighborhood conflicts, etc.) tc police offices to assist them in handling these without retorting to arrest. This program is available to the Portland Police Bureau and Multnomah County Sheriffs Office, but is used mainly by the Sheriff. • Involuntary Commitment security, transportation and subpeona. • Fifty percent cut. saving $15,000. These counsellors assist mentally ill persons who are in the process of involuntary commitment to the state hospital. This function will be handled by the police • Mettopotitaa Yeuth Couauriaaiau - elimination of the county’s share of this program, which is funded jointly by the county and the City of Portland. Saving $36.286. • Detox Center - elimination, saves $312.110. This center provides emer gency care and counselling for alcoholics and serves mainly those who are "picked up from the streets in a drunken condition." They will now go to jail or remain in the street without care. • Shelf Feod Quality - elimination, saves $18,000. Thia program provides sanitation inspection of foods and meats in retail outlets, and supervises the return of foods recalled by the federal government because of health hazards. (Please turn to p. 9 col. 2) Mayor visits Albiaa Mayor Neil Goldschmidt will meet with the Black Justice Committee on February 11th to discuss community affairs related to the Mayor's office. The meeting, the BJCs first monthly community meeting, will be held at Matt Dishman Community Center at 7:30 p.m. Chairman Baruti Artharee urges all members and invites concerned citizens to attend. Thomas wins bus depot discrimination case A final order was issued Friday by Bill Stevenson. Oregon I^abor Commissioner, in a civil rights complaint against N.H. Kneisel. Incorporated, operator of the Trailwsys Bus Depot in Portland. The complaint was filed on March 9th, 1971, by Carl Thomas, a Black man who was employed as a janitor/baggage handler. Thomas had applied for a position as ticket agent and according to testimony, his application was not accepted. He was subjected to an oral interview not given to other candidates. Testimony at the August 1972 hearing further showed that there was no written job description and that Thomas was qualified for the job. White employees had previously been moved from jani tor.baggage handler jobs to ticket agent. Subsequent to his filing a complaint with the Civil Rights Bureau and notifying the Trailways company of his complaint. Thomas suffered harassment at the hands of his employer. Norman Kneisel. owner of N.H. Kneisel. Incorporated, make it known to other employees that he did not appre ciate Thomas' action in filing the com plaint, and Thomas was avoided by other employees. Then, on April 27th, 1971, Thomas was fired for refusing to follow an order qf his supervisor. Thomas was ordered to clear a room that was not ordinarilly part of his job. and thinking it to be part of the harassment against him, refused. He was terminated abruptly by his supervisor, which was authorized by Kneisel, and approved by Thomas' union. Service Employees No. 49. Within fifteen minutes he was given his check and excused Kneisel refused to listen to his explana tion although he had been employed for three and a half years. to cut methadone doses as a way of punishment or control. Milne states that methadone is very difficult to kick, more so than heroin, with withdrawal lasting in some cases up to three months. Methadone Works. Nat with a bang bat with a whimper. Jim Kenny, Director of Treatment for the methadone program, a copy of T.S. Eliot's hymns to banality (The Waste Land) on his coffee table, draws lines on a sheet of paper, explaining how metha done blocks heroin: “It works; it's a last resort treatment modality...this is not a pleasant place...we want people off the program...if people are into other drugs, it shows in their urinalysis." Critics of the use of methadone and the methadone maintenance program argue that the program maintains a drug oriented climate of potential agent informers, strike breakers and assorted army of potential thugs which could be used by the government. One Detroit recruiter of mercenaries for Angola stated recently that he especially wanted methadone addicts, adding that he could "whip them in shape in a couple of weeks." Psychological lability charac terizes the drug culture population in general. A susceptibility to psychological control (vis weekly counseling sessions) and the control mechanism of the daily dope offers government agencies a potential zombie to be used especially in a period of economic collapse against labor and political organizations. This, critics say. has already been the case in New York, Boston, and San Francisco. Michael Powers was expelled from high school when he was a sophomore for suspicion in dealing drugs'. To this day he prides himself on having sold for many (Please turn to p. 8 col. 1) Commissioner Stevenson found N.H. Kneisel, Inc. and Norman H. Kneisel guilty of discrimination in his refusal to consider Thomas for promotion and the harassment following his complaint and ordered Kneisel to pay Thomas $4,000 in damages. He also ordered Kneisel to adopt an affirmative action plan under Civil Rights Division supervision. He was jrdered to offer Thomas a position as ticket agent and to write him a letter of apology. In the matter of the termination, Stevenson found the firing had followed union contract procedure although it was "unusually abrupt." Drugs in Oregon : Methadone maintenance by Roy Harvey Filth in the lfrug» in Portland Series "I wasn't born into this kind of culture I never knew it until I was forced into it. The whole atmosphere is disgust ing..." Bill, a hemopheliar. is one of the few methadone addicts who did not have a criminal habit before getting on the methadone program. Other methadone addicts are generally less critical: Dennis, a 25 year old janitor who has been on methadone three years is defensive of any criticism of the program: "Hey. these people (staff) have their stuff together people who have come from Washington (D.C.).” Asked when he was going to get off methadone. Dennis said: “When I get my stuff together." Why did he get on heroin in the first place. Dennis said “I was going nowhere, doing nothing, and along came Horse..." Along Came Methadone | Dollies, Dolophine, dolls, amidone I The methadone maintenance program in Portland has over 400 addicts who daily drink from 50 to 100 mg. of methadone which blocks their heroin addiction. The program began in 1969, and has had 2.065 admissions. The program costs about $500,000 a year, with the State of Oregon paying about twenty percent of that. Over eighty percent of the methadone addicts have criminal records, usually drug related. The average age (white males) is about 27 years; Rlarks on the program tend to be older, and married; women (mostly white) tend to be younger. Methadone was developed by the German chemical giant company I.G. Farben in 1941, after years of collabora tion with Standard Oil’s research opera lions. Farben. one of the initial funders of the Nazi movement, was ostensibly searching for a substitute drug for morphine. Methadune possessed the properties of addictive opium deriva lives, but none of euphoria-inducing agents, leaving the user functional for purposes of dull, repetitive tasks, en hancing the capacity of the user for heavy labor by dulling both the sense of reality and the sense of pain. Farben named the drug 'Dolphine' in honor of Adolph Hitler the drug was immediately put to use "on the tens of thousands of Jews and Eastern European prisoners of war - the world's first "methadone maintenance centers' were in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany." The Pushers Eli Lilly Company, the sole distributor of methadone, began production of the drug in the U.S. in 1948. In the early 50's an abundance of the synthetic drug could readily be obtained on the streets of Harlem. After this ‘experiment’, the drug was pulled back for more research. After ten years, the drug was re-released legally this time - to be celebrated as the solution to spreading heroin addic tion. In 1964 Doctors Vincent Cole (Rocke feller University) and Marie Nyswander issued a report proclaiming the drug usable on heroin addicts, alcoholics, and “any patient satisfying...for criteria": willingness; susceptibility of the indi vidual to "psychiatric therapies"; capa bility of “ordinary" (dull, repetitive tasks at “increased productivity levels." Thomas Milne (director of pharmacy services for Multnomah County Labora tory) notes that methadone addiction clearly offers a way of controlling people, citing abuses by its administrators “in other cities": the cutting or threatening Europe’s New Year storms: Were they man - made? IPS Special Report) Introduction The events surrounding the storms that hit the European continent around New Year, 1976 make possible the establishment of a prima facie case that the storms thebiselves resulted from NATO coordinated weather modification aimed at Europe. This weather modifica tion operation had the deliberate inten tion of bringing into play civil defense and military personnel who, in the wake of the emergency, would regiment and demoralize the areas' working clas> population. The following brief will outline the history of weather modification; ^lATO U.S. operational capabilities in weather modification; the unusual weather his tories of the storms, including informa tion on deliberate sabotage of European storm warning systems before they hit, and the military apparatus that was poised to carry out civil defense functions in the wake of storm destruction. As will be clearly shown in the brief, the actions of civil defense personnel during and after the storms parallel military opera tions necessary to establish and maintain national military governments capable of enforcing the austerity programs which currently stand as adopted government policy in the United States, Canada and Western Europe. On December 30th, at noon Greenwich Mean Time, a United States weather satellite observed a low pressure weather system east of Richmond, Virginia, and south of Newfoundland. By the time this system died, it had become the worst storm to hit Eur >e in 29 years. Striking the Northern Irish coast on January 2nd, intensifying drastically over Scotland, sweeping destruction over the North Sea and Northern Europe with 100 mph winds and severe flooding, this was followed after one day by yet another storm, nearly as severe as the first. The events in the scenario of the 1976 New Year storms indicate that much more was involved than meteorological phenomena and subsequent recovery. The storm wave took place in the context of an on going economic and political drive by the Rockefeller allied international financial fnction to preserve the dollar denominateff debt structure against escalating pressures of depres sion collapse. Related to this political framework is the fact of on going research into and implementation of geophysical warfare techniques. At the 39th session of the General Assembly, the Soviet Union, recognizing a significant weather warfare potential already devel oped by NATO forces, entered a call to eliminate the danger of the modification of the environment and climate for military and other purposes, since these would be incompatible with ensuring international security, human welfare and health. The events involving mobilization of the affected populations, the incidents involving agencies concerned with vari ous aspects of the storm, and the suspicious nature of the storm tracks, indicate that a chaos and confusion operation to be directed at the European working class was in place, ready to be triggered under the right conditions. Winter storms exist in plenty. To trigger a weather warfare operation it would be necessary only to wait for a storm suitable for modification, particularly one over mountainous Scotland, and then begin the operation. The Scenario The satellite information giving the location of the storm was supplied by the National Weather Satellite Service, and (Please turn to p. 9 col. 3) a F IR S T STORM □ SEC O N D STO R M
