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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rascal who wrote (22562)	7/17/2003 7:37:47 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 89467

Crystal-ball crackdown -- new S.F. fortune-teller law City takes Gypsies' sensitivities into account Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, July 17, 2003 San Francisco -- Anybody familiar with a soul-searching place like San Francisco could have predicted how tough it would be for the city to require its fortune- tellers to obtain a permit from police to do their business. It's a live-and-let-forecast place. Yet San Francisco supervisors voted late Tuesday to join the handful of U.S. cities that require fortune-tellers to post a rate schedule, get fingerprinted and offer customers a receipt for their services, just like professional masseuses and pawnbrokers. "It is consumer fraud protection," said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who sponsored the measure at the request of the district attorney's office. "It's about weeding out a few bad apples." Crafting this crystal-ball crackdown became a journey through the city's political minefield of cultural sensitivities, constitutional rights, the emotionally vulnerable and chicken embryos. It attracted high-powered lobbyists such as Robert McCarthy, who represented a bloc of the Romany community, which some refer to as Gypsies. They were concerned that the ordinance unfairly targeted their community. Supervisor Tony Hall, one of the dissenters in the supervisors' 8-3 vote, called the ordinance "ethnic profiling." "No matter how you cut it, (this legislation) affects the Gypsy people," Hall said. Fortune-telling is not an occupation to the city's estimated 4,000 Romany Gypsies, Hall said -- it's part of their culture. Any Romany who submits to the ordinance's identification requirements "will be castigated, thrown out of the clan," he said. LOBBYIST '95% HAPPY' WITH RULE To allay some Romany fears, supervisors removed a requirement that fortune- tellers submit their Social Security numbers. McCarthy, representing the San Francisco Romani Association, said he was "95 percent happy with the ordinance. " So were victims of alleged fortune-teller fraud. While the ordinance brought a spate of "Can I get a receipt for my death curse?" jokes, the supervisors also heard from people such as "Cindy," a 37- year-old UC Berkeley graduate who didn't want her real name used. Several years ago, on a whim to find out about her love life, Cindy dropped $20 on a Union Square fortune-teller, who quickly convinced her that her 9- year-old sister would suffer a relapse of cancer unless she followed her instructions. A few days later, Cindy returned with an egg from home, as the fortune- teller had told her to do. Through a sleight-of-hand trick, Cindy said, the fortune-teller cracked the egg and produced "what looked like some kind of chicken embryo" inside. A bad omen, the fortune-teller said, using one of several tricks that persuaded Cindy to empty her credit line of $15,000 over the next three months. "A lot of people don't come forward because they feel stupid," said Cindy, a technology worker who didn't file a police report until years later, when it was too late. "But she was very convincing and I was really emotionally vulnerable at the time." And her sister's cancer is still in remission. BIG MONEY TO BE MADE Police say that while only 60 alleged victims have come forward over the past decade, most have lost tens of thousands of dollars. Scammers leave town after making a big score, and it's not uncommon for fortune-tellers to make $100,000 a year, said Greg Ovanessian, a San Francisco police inspector with the department's fraud unit. "You know how many clients it can take a fortune-teller to earn that? One," Ovanessian said. "Finally, we're able to start a paper trail on these guys." Hall was skeptical, quipping that fortune-tellers should post a giant "Buyer beware" sign. "There's a certain point where you can't regulate for people who are foolish," he said. Hall wasn't the only skeptic. For months, lawmakers and law-enforcement officials met with victims, psychics, astrologers and San Francisco's Romany population, which investigators say controls a sizable share of the city's fortune-telling operations. Many Romanies objected to early versions of the legislation, fearing police would be given the power to invade their home businesses. One Romany invoked the memory of the Nazis exterminating hundreds of thousands of Gypsies. 'JUST LIKE WHAT HITLER DID' "You want to put a mark on us," Jimmy Mitchell, a Romany, told the board's finance committee last week. "If you pass this legislation, it will be just like what Hitler did to us." Peskin disagreed, noting that San Francisco boasts fortune-tellers of many ethnicities and races and that most city businesses are required to get some form of permit. Nonetheless, in an effort to appear not to be targeting any particular oracle, the ordinance defines fortune-telling 45 ways, a list that includes the power divined from reading coffee grounds to talking to dead people. Not necessarily at the same time. The city's future will include dollar signs, albeit small ones. Hitting up San Francisco's estimated 130 fortune-tellers could net the cash-starved city $46,410 in one-time permit revenue, according to the city controller's office. The $357 fee is more than one required for funeral procession escorting but less than one demanded of nonresident junk gatherers. karen wetoldthemsunzabeechesandweirnotevensighkick

To: Rascal who wrote (22562)	7/17/2003 7:40:15 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 89467

Advisers Warn Iraq Could Slip Away Advisers to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld say a growing sense of disenfranchisement and pervasive fear that Saddam Hussein will return are undermining U.S. efforts. By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — A team of civilian advisors tapped by the Pentagon to examine the postwar situation in Iraq said today that the United States had a "closing window" to bring stability to the country or risk having the broader population turn against the American occupation. The advisors, who traveled to Iraq at the request of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said deteriorating security, a growing sense of disenfranchisement and pervasive fear that Saddam Hussein will return are undermining U.S. efforts. "We do feel we are in a closing window situation," probably less than a year, said Frederick Barton, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank that organized the Iraqi study. Barton, a former United Nations official, was part of a five-member team of reconstruction experts that spent 11 days in Iraq this month. The team discussed its findings at a press conference in Washington. Among the group's recommendations were a significant expansion of patrols on Iraqi streets, the establishment of Iraqi-run councils to manage local affairs in districts outside Baghdad, and a series of work programs to pump money into the economy and "keep Iraqis from being idle." The most serious problem identified in their report is a "general sense of steady deterioration in the security situation in Baghdad, Mosul and elsewhere." Beyond the spate of attacks that have killed more than 30 U.S. soldiers in hostile action since May 1, aid workers and other non-military officials have also had their vehicles fired upon in recent weeks, and had stones thrown at them at reconstruction sites. Although the coalition military presence is large, with some 150,000 troops in the country, "it is not visible enough at the street level ... nor is it sufficiently agile," the report said. Barton said U.S. forces have conducted effective sweeps through swaths of hostile territory to confiscate weapons and root out insurgent groups. But "there was not a feeling in the city of ... the cop on the beat," Barton said. The occasional Humvee seen rolling by, Barton said, "looked almost more a target than a source of comfort." Much of the U.S. military's resources are tied up guarding American compounds and other large facilities, rather than patrolling the cities and enforcing law and order, Barton said. Even aid teams and reconstruction crews are being forced to devote large chunks of their budgets to hiring security details. Sending more U.S. troops to the country might have been helpful right after the war, but could inflame the situation now. The report said the United States should step up military patrols, seek commitments of forces from other nations, and hire private contractors to guard low-risk installations. The security problems are compounded by pervasive fears among Iraqis that Hussein could return to power. From hundreds of interviews with Iraqis, the team concluded that most Iraqis are happy Hussein has been overthrown, but have been cowed by strikes on Iraqis cooperating with the coalition. "Iraqis do want a new government, they don't want to go back," said Robert C. Orr, a former White House official now working as Washington director of the Council on Foreign Relations. "The bigger issue is unfreezing the larger Iraqi population that would really like to create a new country but are too scared to." The report expressed particular concern that the United States has failed to make better progress restoring basic power, water and oil service, calling these aspects of the infrastructure the "iron triangle." The authors said the United States should be moving more quickly to bring in power generators and other supplies to fix infrastructure problems, and has been too slow to give up on the idea of mending existing systems now damaged beyond repair. "It would be hard to have too many generators in Iraq," Barton said. "If there are stockpiles of them in U.S. warehouses, it would be wise to liberate them." The group offered some novel suggestions, including using revenue from future oil sales to create bank accounts for ordinary Iraqis to encourage them to use the banking system. The team also suggested setting up a new television broadcast to communicate the American message and compete with coverage on the Arab network Al Jazeera. The panel noted that the postwar situation in Iraq is unlike other reconstruction efforts in that it is being run almost entirely by the Pentagon, but the group stopped short of criticizing this arrangement or blaming the military for the problems cited in the report. "However we got here, U.S. prestige and credibility is on the line," Orr said. "This is one the U.S. has to get right." Panel members said their findings have been received with interest by L. Paul Bremer III, the U.S. official managing reconstruction in Iraq, as well as senior officials at the Pentagon. latimes.com

To: Rascal who wrote (22562)	7/18/2003 12:46:47 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

U.S. High Horse Now Riderless _____________________________ by Jay Bookman Published on Thursday, July 17, 2003 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution _____________________________ Some people are born humble. Others have humility thrust upon them. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for example, was asked in a recent interview whether he still had faith in prewar intelligence claiming a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. "I think that the, the, information we had over a period of time that I cited that the intelligence community gave to me and I read as opposed to ad-libbing was correct. It, it, it was carefully stated . . ." Talk about carefully stated. It's telling to see the bantam rooster of the Bush administration turn so halting and defensive, insisting that, hey, he had only been reading what somebody else handed him. Then again, there's a lot of that going around these days. In fact, if Vietnam was the place where America lost her innocence, Iraq may be the place where we lose our arrogance. The once-triumphant Richard Perle has gone underground. The sublimely smug William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and stalwart champion of empire, no longer looks as though he just swallowed a canary. Crow is more like it. And we've heard more from Saddam Hussein in recent weeks than from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Maybe because Saddam, unlike Wolfowitz, has a plan that's actually working. The humility of Rumsfeld and others, while belated, is well-earned. Too many of our soldiers are still dying. Too many others, living every day with the knowledge that an attack could come from anywhere, now find themselves acting with the brutality that has long been required of occupying forces. The transformation is no doubt necessary for their self-defense, but it may haunt their nights for years. Contrary to previous assurances, our top generals now admit that we will be stuck in Iraq for years at a current cost of a billion dollars a week, not including substantial reconstruction costs. The need to keep at least 150,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq for the foreseeable future also means that our military will be seriously overextended for a long time. Globally, the credibility of the United States is in tatters. At a time when both North Korea and Iran truly do seem to be moving toward a nuclear capability -- as contrasted with the fictitious nuclear program attributed to Iraq -- we find ourselves in a weak position, both militarily and diplomatically, to challenge them. We've even been reduced to asking, all but begging, other nations to contribute troops to Iraq, but most are declining. They want no part of a war that they advised against, a war they were ridiculed by U.S. officials for opposing, a war that now seems to be going bad. Anybody can make mistakes, of course. But mistakes born of arrogance are particularly hard to accept, and our leaders made plenty, right from the beginning. The United Nations would never dare to withhold its approval for an invasion, yet it did. The Iraqi people would welcome us with parades and confetti, but instead it's been rocket-propelled grenades. Weapons of mass destruction posed a grave threat to our safety of our loved ones, yet so far none has been found. And the notion that we could create a democratic Iraq to serve as a beacon to the rest of the Islamic world is now exposed for the romantic claptrap it had always been. For a year now, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Vice President Dick Cheney and others have treated U.S. intelligence agencies as little more than public-relations flacks, tasked to produce propaganda that the CEO needed to sell a product. They drew up no Plan B in case they were wrong about Iraq, because the notion that they could be wrong never entered their minds. Any who dared suggest otherwise were dismissed as fools, traitors or appeasers. Even when smart people, experienced people, such as Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, tried to tell them that an occupation of Iraq might be expensive and require a lot of manpower, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz publicly scoffed. And in that willful blindness, they have led us here. Today, and tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future, our men and women in uniform will be dealing with the consequences of their leaders' misinformed arrogance. But surely, those who made the mistakes should face consequences, too. "If Donald Rumsfeld was here," Spc. Clinton Deitz of the 3rd Infantry Division told ABC News in Baghdad, "I'd ask him for his resignation." _______________________________ Jay Bookman is deputy editorial page editor. © 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ### commondreams.org

To: Rascal who wrote (22562)	7/18/2003 6:25:50 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Buckpassing the 16 words ______________________________________ By Daniel Schorr Commentary The Christian Science Monitor from the July 18, 2003 edition WASHINGTON – How does a president act when things go wrong and responsibility has to be assigned? Like President Reagan, who used the passive "mistakes were made" to explain the Iran-contra affair? Or like the few presidents I can remember in my lifetime who refused to shift responsibility? In 1960, President Eisenhower was advised by some, including his own brother, Milton, to blame the CIA for the U-2 spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union, its pilot captured. As described in Michael Beschloss's book "May Day," the president barked at his brother that if he blamed a subordinate, he'd have to fire him, and that would be hypocrisy. Eisenhower took full responsibility for the incident and refused to apologize for it, causing Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to storm out of the Paris summit. President Truman had that famous sign on hisdesk, "The buck stops here." And, in his farewell address in January 1953, he said, "The President - whoever he is - has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody." In 1961, President Kennedy was advised by Vice President Lyndon Johnson, among others, to blame the CIA for the debacle of the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion. According to his White House aide Arthur Schlesinger, Kennedy refused and had the White House issue a statement saying, "President Kennedy has stated from the beginning that as president he bears sole responsibility" and opposes any attempt to shift that responsibility. That was also the time Kennedy said, "Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan." Now President Bush faces an unexpected firestorm set off by the now- famous 16 words in his State of the Union address last January: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Mr. Bush, peppered with questions on his African trip, said tersely, "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services." And he left it to others to explain more fully. CIA Director George Tenet loyally stated, "The CIA approved the president's State of the Union address before it was delivered." The CIA, mind you, not necessarily the director. It appears that "mistakes were made." • Daniel Schorr is a senior news analyst at National Public Radio. christiansciencemonitor.com