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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (June 22, 1983)
Fashion show for kids only Page 8 Israel rejects Ethiopian Jews Training woman athletes Page 9 Page 5 ÍPORTMND OBSERVER Volume XIII, Number 36 June 22, 1983 25C Per Copy U « » S 959-680-855 Prostitutes, 'johns face mandatory fine, jail Commissioner M ildred Schwab and Police Chief Ron Still will re quest City Council approval Thurs day, June 23rd, o f an ordinance that will make prostitution a criminal of- lense and set mandatory sentences tor prostitution. I f adopted, the ordinance will re quire a $300 fine for the first viola tion in any 24-month period; not less than 7 days in jail and a $500 fine o f $500 and 30 days imprison ment for third and subsequent viola tions. The penalties apply to prosti tutes and their customers. At a later date, the C ity Council SUMMER IN THE PARK (Photo: Richard J. Brown) Pickets hit 'Portland connection' by Rich Lochner Nuclear weapons parts manufac ture should not be allowed in Port land any more than making torture equipment, said anti-nuclear activist and author Norm an Solomon at a City H all picket June 18. New Clear Vision, a new local disarmament group, organized the rally to urge City Commissioners to pass an ordi nance for a nuclear-free Portland. The event drew 50 participants. Precision Castparts, a Portland firm which makes housings for the cruise missile, was picketed by 30 on June 20. "Corporations have a moral responsibility to draw the line at nuclear weapons w o rk ," said picket spokesperson Jim Cook, from Northwest Action for Dis armament. Cruise missile production will make arms control more difficult, and nuclear war more thinkable, Cook says. The highly accurate and maneuverable cruise could knock out Soviet missile silos, encouraging them to launch first and ask ques tions later. The air-launched cruise is small, and easily moved and con cealed, making it much harder for the Soviets to verify a nuclear freeze. Cook says. Defense spending doesn't create jobs overall, says Rick Ball o f New Clear Vision, because so much defense money goes for high-tech wizardry and salaries. Blacks lost 109,000 jobs net each year in the '70s due to military spending, ac cording to a study by Operation P U S H in Chicago. Tektronix, Precision Castparts, Portland State University, and Bingham -Willamette are the largest local nuclear weapons contractors. Ball says. Castparts could make up for de fense losses by selling more o f its artificial limb products if govern ment funds were switched from de fense to health care, according to leaflets passed out by picketers. When peace activists met Cast- parts vice-president Roy M arvin, however. Cook says he told them the company has a legal contract with Boeing to make the missile parts, and it can’t be broken. Cook says M arvin declined legal help in the matter. M r. M arvin was unavail able for direct comment. City Hall rally M any rally participants at City H all said they came to find out more about the Portland-nuclear weapons connection. An unemployed pre school teacher whose boyfriend works at Precision Castparts said that even though "m ilita ry con tracts are bread-and-butter to us," they oppose the work, and feel there must be something better the com pany could make. PSU student Steve Engelman says he's concerned about the future when over half the budget goes to the military, which he believes is due to "b ig profits and Cold War paranoia." Connections between nuclear weapons and uranium mining on Indian land were drawn by Native American activist Barbara Aehle. She said reservations contain 90*« o f U .S. uranium ore, and many Native American miners and resi dents have died due to exposure to radioactivity. The protest grew from door-to- door canvassing New Clear Vision has done almost daily since its founding last September. Through this new approach, canvassers have signed 1200 members, many of whom have never been politically involved before. The rally and the picket are signs (Please turn to Page 4 Column 5) will be asked to adopt an ordinance prohibiting "loitering to solicit prostitution'' which will apply to customers. An existing law makes loitering to engage in prostitution (by the prostitute) illegal. A third ordinance defines prosti tution and makes it illegal to "e n gage in, or offer or agree to engage in, sexual conduct or sexual contact in return for a fee,” or to "p ay, or offer or agree to pay, a fee to engage ir sexual conduct or sexual contact." The Council is asked to declare an emergency so the ordinances can go into effect upon passage. The residents of North and North east Portland have sought a solution to the highly visible prostitution on the major thoroughfares and out of the neighborhoods, however, con cerns have been expressed over this ordinance. The neighborhood organizations and concerned groups were not notified about the proposed ordi nance until M onday, which did not give them an opportunity to make a reasonable response to the Thursday hearing. Although the stated target o f the ordinances is the customer, the bur den will fall on the prostitute. The ordinance is not coupled with diver sion programs to assist those women who would like to leave prostitution and the funds raised are not ear marked for this use. The ordinance does not deal with young prostitutes who cannot be sentenced to ja il and who should be provided alternatives. The police and other members o f the criminal justice system have continuously said that there is no jail space for prostitutes. Some community members fear that the real purpose o f this ordinance might be to help M ayor Frank Ivancie get his new jail. The speed with which the ordi nance will hit the City Council is also a concern. W ith no advance the ordinance to intervene. Is the purpose o f the rapid time . COMMISSIONER SCHWAB publicity, there is no opportunity for those who oppose or question frame to avoid public opposition so the ordinances can be adopted and challenges will have to be through the courts? This would give the police the opportunity to use the potentially unconstitutional ordi nances while appeals and challenges arc winding their way through the court system. Even those who favor the intent o f the ordinances prefer a public de bate that would allow the problems to be aired and solved. There appears to be justification, (hey say, for the rush. Ghana coup: Roots in CIA Three weeks ago the government o f Ghana charged that the U.S. in telligence services and U.S. Ambas sador Thomas Smith are trying to provoke turmoil and bring about outside intervention in order to overthrow the Ghaman govern ment. Last weekend the government put down an attempted coup. Whether this attempt will be traced to the C IA is yet to be seen. According to the People's Daily Graphic, the U.S. embassy has become " a nest o f spies." There has been a large increase in its staff, which now includes experienced in telligence people. The chief of the station is G. Shaughnessy. C IA agents seek recruits in reac tionary labor and religious organi zations and efforts are made to win over top political officials, military officers, scientists, journalists and businessmen. They use local reactionaries to organize anti-gov ernment demonstrations. The newspaper charges that D. O ’ Laflin, representative in Ghana o f the A fro-A m erican labor organi zation, the Peace Corps, and some multi-national corporations are also involved. The People's D aily Graphic charges that there are armed groups on the border, organized by the C IA with the help o f Israeli intelligence services. Hundreds o f mercenaries are being trained in neighboring countries, according to Kodijo Tsikada, special advisor to G hana’s Provisional National Defense Council. A few days before the coup at tempt, Richard Cohen Associates, a public relations agency in New Y o rk, announced the form ation o f a "united fro n t” o f groups in the United States and Canada who have joined to seek the overthrow of G hana’s government. Reminiscent o f the U .S. backed "B ay of Pigs" fiasco and current U .S. involvement in Nicaragua is the Ghana Congress o f the U .S .A . and Canada's intention to develop a "M anifesto for Change in G h a n a—a major declaration of policies and principles for adoption by a successor government to the Rawlings dictatorship." It also call ed on the international community " to refraing from any actions that either support the Rawlings u s u rp ation or prolong the horrendous and inhumane suffering of G hanians"— a call for economic sactions that could lead to political and economic stability. Flight Lt. Jerry Rawlings recently blamed Ghana's economic problems on several years of mismanagement, corruption, neglect and dissipation o f public funds in addition to wide fluctuation in the price o f exports, which makes meaningful economic- planning impossible. Rawlings assured Ghana's private business people that he has no intention of dismantling the private sector but hopes they will join with the government in "waging the economic war it has declared." Communications: The weapons systems nobody is talking about by Lenny Siegel M O U N T A IN VIEW . CA — Moat proposals for limiting the arms race, from governments and peace acti vists alike, focus on warheads and strategic delivery systems — missiles and aircraft. But neither a nuclear freeze nor a U.S.-Soviet arms control agreement will affect some o f the most sophis ticated weapons now under con struction here in the Silicon Valley, and elsewhere in both the United States and the Soviet Union. Electronic communications and surveillance technologies are still considered non-lethal by public o f ficials, the press and the peace movement. Yet these systems are critical elements in strategies for a first strike, as well as scenarios for protracted nuclear warfare: During the Falklands W ar in 1982, British aircraft refueled at a little-known U .S. base on Ascension Island, a mere speck on the map of the equatorial Atlantic. Like remote U .S. naval air stations all over the globe, Ascension hosts P-3C " O rio n " anti-submarine patrol planes. Orions constantly scan the oceans, using sonar, radar and mag netic detection to track Russian sub marines. The planes, which carry sophisticated signal-processing com puters, are linked to undersea sensor fields and land-based computer cen ters. The Navy plans to spend about $16 billion on anti-submarine intelli gence systems over the five years ending in 1986. M a jo r programs include the Lockheed-built Orion, IB M ’s "Advanced Signal Proces sor” airborne computer and "Caesar,” a system o f underwater sonar detectors linked to onshore computers. Caesar fields are located o ff the U.S. coasts and at naval "choke points” such as the Iceland Gaps, areas near the Azores, and in the Straits o f Japan. Anti-submarine warfare (A S W ) has the appearance o f a defensive program, but in the topsy-turvy world o f nuclear strategy, it is the system most likely to make a first strike possible. As presently config ured, the fleet o f ballistic missile submarines o f the United States and the Soviet Union are retaliatory weapons, more secure from preemp tive first strike than bombers or land-based missiles. But as the prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Insti tute concluded in 1979, " I f the United States achieves a first-strike capability against Soviet IC B M s, as appears to be one o f the objectives o f the M X program, and if this is coupled with maintenance of the present lead in A S W , there are serious grounds to fear that the concept o f mutual assured destruc tion, with all its faults, will be aban doned in favor o f a war-fighting and war-winning strategy." In the United States, conservative legislators inserted into the House Nuclear Freeze Resolution a para graph calling for a freeze on A SW , but their move did not represent serious consideration o f ways to three-tenths o f one foot per second, limit ASW advances. In fact, these and to record the time to within one- legislators* goal was to signal their millionth o f a second. support for preserving the present, The U .S . A ir Force recently widely acknowledged U .S. lead in awarded Rockwell International a A SW at the arms-control negotia $1.21 billion, multi-year contract to tions table. provide NAVSTAR spacecraft. While astronomers and astrologers When N A V S T A R is fully opera continue gazing at the stars, future tional — the A ir Force hopes by navigators will look to man-made 1988 — the system will cost at least objects: the U.S. "N A V S TA R $3.9 billion. Global Positioning System," and Less is known publicly about the Soviets’ " G L O N A S S .” G L O N A S S , but the Soviets have an N A V S T A R , as presently planned, nounced that it will consist o f nine will consist o f 18 satellites orbiting to 12 satellites circling the earth in the earth on six different 12-hour three orbital paths. paths. Ships, planes and missiles Both systems will be available in carrying N A V S T A R terminals will less sophisticated forms to interna be able to compute their positions to tional civilian users. And conven within 50 feet o f three dimensions, tional U .S. and Soviet military to calculate their velocity to within (Please turn Io page 2 col. 1/ 8,
