Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 8, 1991, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press january my scandal costs billions Arizona sipping Earl Grey Tea with scones and Finger Sand Wiches and while a piano tinkles discreetly in the Back is a pleasant Way to spend the late afternoon on the Large inner Terrace of the palatial phoenician a Well dressed englishman hovers overseeing the Tea ritual carried out by Young women in Scarlett Ohara style Long murmuring pleasantries about How civilized it All far across the vast room can be heard the occasional cries of Wel come As another guest checks from the entry door behind comes the slap of sneakers As Young men dressed in desert col ored Beach outfits Rush to open car doors for new arrivals who May be paying Between and a night or beyond the open Terrace outside the High the gentle de Cember Sun is sinking Over the putting the croquet the seven swimming the Roomy or Little through which move a legion of Busy ubiquitous staff on other duties cruise on Golf carts past acres of Green Golf Ponds and splashing Little As if the Arizona desert were not a few minutes drive guests Drift through corridors floored and walled in try ing to decide in which of several exquisitely furnished restaurants they will Dine one of the Scarlett Voharas Curt sies and presents the Tea Bill a Welcome to the fantasy world of Charlie absent Star of senatorial ethics committee hear Ings in Washington in which five senators Are trying desperately to prove to Public opinion that Keating did not buy them like bagels in a the phoenician is what the French Call de trap too it is the Centre of a 130acre luxury resort begun in opened in 1989 and intended to celebrate the 1980s Yuppie values of ostentatious greed and conspicuous con sumption at somebody else sex hapless depositors that somebody else included hapless depositors in the Lincoln savings and loan institution in now the some body else is the american tax pay built with million federally insured the phoenician had the bad Luck to open just As Many yuppies were turning from greed to it had the Good Luck to meet a new Friend called Resolution Trust the Etc operates it today As a Branch of government because it is part of the rubble of Keatings collapsed seedy financial Keatings is Only one of Many such seedy empires with which the Etc and the taxpayer Are mainly in Texas but All Over the the Etc is awash with properties that it is trying to sell so As to limit the Burden on the tax payer of the catastrophic savings and loan the total eventual Cost to the taxpayer will be this figure is arrived at by Tak ing the current estimate of a Feder Al government Cost of billion to sort out the mess left by All the failed savings and loan in is led away to face charges in the s l scandal David Macdonald Washington editor it is supposed to be done by the last Day of there Are no tax revenues to pay for due to the mighty budget Congress and the White House have not suggested raising taxes to the Treasury will sell More whose inter est costs will bring the estimated Cost up to billion by the year to billion by changed Law the scandal happened be cause Congress and former presi Dent Ronald Reagan in 1982 changed the Law regulating instead of limiting them to Mak ing Home the Law suddenly allowed them to buy and develop any kind of using depositors Money that was insured by the Federal government up to per this turned the Industry into a Mammoth from being the protected Harbor for the savings of the Little a concept immortalized by Jimmy stewarts 1946 movie its a wonderful these institutions became rain barrels in which Crooks went fishing for so much Cash was to Allied to so Many flexible accountants willing to certify inaccurate Book keeping As genuine and so Many lawyers ready to Bend the that new owners became Able to buy political influence and to bully they were operating As if there were no the swindles perpetrated by Many operators Are so intricate and numerous that Law enforcement has had a hard Job catching it is still rare to see one of these High fliers in one of these rare cases involves the notorious Vernon savings and loan of a Small Community on the Edge of the High life its builder Don lived the High life on the funds of unsuspecting in his wife and friends saw Europe the comfortable by rented Lear Jet and rented Rolls eating nightly in the Cost Liest sleeping in expensive Vernon president eventually pleaded guilty to hiring prostitutes to service borrowers and depositors paid for million of Art for his for extra Homes in for the yacht he parked on the Potomac River to buy influence with Mem Bers of one of the Best moments of 1990 for swindled depositors and pocket picked taxpayers was the april sentencing of Vernon chairman and chief executive Woody a Federal judge sent Lemons to a Federal Penitentiary for 30 with this character reference a thief in every sense of the Keatings wife was in charge of the Interior design of the Phoeni Cian with a no limit Cheque Book in she roamed the world look ing for resting Between shopping trips at Keating mansions in Florida and the Baha imported Marble set in place when she returned from one trip was ripped out because she hated the by the time the color was Satis she had spent million on Marble from million on original Art and millions More on such Little touches As the 23 Karat Gold when the Bubble elderly clients of Keating in California found their life savings Anita and George Sparrow lost Joan left lost Auto body shop worker Victor Hernan Dez lost his Deposit for a saved Over 10 each of them had bought High in Terest Bonds peddled in the Lincoln building by sales staff for one of Keatings the scam was that building location and Sim Ilar letter head made it appear that these were related to the and therefore federally they were they became worthless when the Keating company declared Keatings senatorial friends car ried him along until his payments to them and their services to him became Public now his cries of indignation about Rapa Cious bureaucrats harassing hard working businessmen attract less he has begun a lengthy journey through the Justice sys at the phoenician the government and taxpayers continue to lose their Over staffed and under it is an expensive White elephant that nobody will it May eventually have to be Given away for sex Trade ignites thai aids epidemic by Robert Stone special to the free press Thailand girl they offered me for 200 baht was exquisite and just 14 years it was her first Day on the Job and she was special they but when our eyes met Only possible form of communication since she didst speak a word of English nor i a word of thai i could see that she was badly the perceptive Madam pointed her Long red Finger Nail toward another girl gyrating naked on the elevated bar who looked a few years perhaps id prefer somebody with a Little More experience for the same she you want All night or just Shack up she shouted in my ear above the throb from an assault of frantic behind us on a floodlit a naked looking bored and Dis went through the motions of sex like a pair of trained a Drunken crowd of eager voyeurs milled about and cheered the More exotic Blunt negotiations were taking place All around but business is off somewhat lately and fear is stalking the brothels of Bangkok notorious Pat Pong local health workers contend that the thai capital could soon be a City of the few countries outside they face the potential disaster from aids that Thailand Thailand is a perfect Host for the in addition to International sex thai culture cultivates almost every other conceivable Factor that facilitates the spread of the the country has a huge Needle addict an Active Gay Community and thai men from All walks of life make prolific use of both male and health officials concerns arise not simply from the sex distance of aids but from the astounding rate at which it is spreading through the general Thailand first Case was reported in 1984 and by the end of 1988 there were still Only ten confirmed cases in the entire coun but in 1989 the thai health authorities found almost his positive cases individuals whose blood carries the virus that causes officials estimates put the actual number at some social agencies claim the figure could be As much As ten times dangerous sex recent blood tests from a group of Lowed prostitutes revealed a per cent infection rate making sex in Thailand several times More dangerous than playing russian while thai culture has traditionally incorporated a casual attitude toward prostitution began to draw International attention during the Vietnam War when american servicemen started stopping off for r and r in in the period since the sex Industry has developed and expanded dramatic estimates of the number of prostitutes based on police lists of brothels and Massage Parlours run at half a million or one per cent of the some analysts argue that the figure is twice As Thailand sex like its spicy elephants and Golden Temple has come to be identified As part of the country exotic aside from the traditional thai brothels where men choose from a group of women sitting behind a Glass partition wearing Little More than their number there Are establishments catering to a variety of european tastes with fake Beer gardens and italian the Jap anese and arabs have Tea houses and Ca Bahs theres even a strip of saloons with Rowdy country music from the Good of jumbo jets loaded with single men on sex junkets from around the world descend on bang Kok every until recently Little had been done to come to grips with this catastrophe in the too Many vested interests were determined to see the sex business continue unchallenged and the image of Thailand As a sex Paradise with its More than five million arrivals every is after the country largest foreign Exchange but with the disease now spreading at epidemic rates through the Gener Al alarms Are being sounded from a variety of new crusader Foremost among the crusaders is Mechai a thai sen Ator and founder of the nongovernmental population and Community development pc a efforts Are credited with helping thai land succeed in defusing a potentially disastrous population explosion in the 1950s and 1960s through a Large scale Campaign of voluntary family planning bringing the birth rate from a terrifying per cent Down to a comfortable per now Mechai has turned his organizations energies to the Battle against aids and his approach is based on unconventional the nations government controlled radio and to stations now blast a relentless condom blowing contests Are arranged in bars and brothels and a cops and rubbers Campaign had Bangkok traffic policemen handing out advice and con Doms on the the organization even marshalled an army of Avon ladies to hand out condoms along with their lipstick and face these efforts have raised conscious Ness and identified the crusading senator with the Campaign to the extent that people no longer ask for condoms in the drug stores but re quest a package of Mech Ais in but the Campaign faces a Tough race against Public health authorities Are finding up to a thou Sand new cases a a steady Stream of new recruits for work in the brothels comes from the isolated and impoverished Northern Hill tribes where parents have been known to sell their daughters into virtual slavery for the Price of a color television tourist arrivals continue to increase and the flow of pleasure seeking along Pat Pong Road has diminished Only Thailand Only Hope is that aids awareness information is spreading faster than the when it became Clear i want a a group of muscular bouncers who looked like they meant business moved in and extorted 50 times the going rate for the Beer id i swiftly found myself Back in the sea of human degradation that flows through Pat Pong Road 24 hours a above me a Kaleidoscope of Neon signs promised tantalizing flesh in a dozen among them Hung the More discrete notice boards of doctors and quacks offering cd checkups and promis ing results in an hour Pat Pongs Only growth Robert Stone is a Canadian journalist based in nations need to curb worldwide arms Trade by Jonathan Power special to the free press London Secretary of state James Baker is making an important Point when he says that if Iraq pulls out of it need no longer feel threatened by the possibility of an Allied he also Points out that the embargo must continue until Iraq goes along with some credible International monitoring and control of its biological and nuclear arms industries and imposes some discipline on its acquisition of modern conventional the Only thing wrong with it is that it applies Only to the arms sales business has reeked for so Long that our political nostrils Are no longer capable of sniffing out right from despite the scandals of recent years Libya chemical weapons Israel and Pakistan nuclear bombs and now Saddam Hussein try at everything All weve had is some tighten ing of the pressure on overwhelmingly but also american and that Export this kind of War not one Leader of a major exporting country has said lets sit Down right now and draw up a comprehensive treaty limiting the sales of one Lone has made a Start on its own earlier this year foreign minister air Dienstbier announced that his country would pull out of the arms Trade without taking into account what the pragmatists this is no Token after the soviet Czechoslovakia was the largest and most sophisticated communist bloc arms until recently nearly half of the country earnings of hard currency came from the arms apart from producing the notorious plastic explosive semtex and who knows what kind of raw materials for the chemical weapons half of the worlds military training planes were produced or assembled in czechoslovak Aero the air plane fac tory near is half its output dropping like a Stone and the famous tank factory in Martin has been ordered to con Vert to producing perhaps it needs someone of the moral depth of a political playwright president Vaclav Havel to put principle so High on the political compare whats going on in Czechoslovakia with what is revealed in a new internal report written for British Britain largest manufacturer of military it observes with All the remorse of a half dried out drunk determined to get his hand Back on the bottle that the company was totally unprepared for the ending of the cold War and recommends survival by corporate acquisition of civilian firms and increased arms this is the amoral Western governments and companies have abrogated All responsibility for arms sales for so Long Selling has become an almost unquestioned yet it was not always before the first big Oil Price Rise of 1974 and the desperate urge that descended on the industrialized capitalist and to Recycle the Oil billions through arms there was a school of restraint that occasionally in 1950 the France and Britain signed a tripartite declaration to limit arms sales to the Middle East in an attempt to lower tensions Between the Arab states and it lasted five years until the soviet Union and Czechoslovakia concluded a big arms Deal with Egypt and France secretly signed an arms Deal with in 1967 president Lyndon Johnson pro posed that the and the soviet Union limit arms sales in the Middle soviet pre Mier Alexei Kosygin responded with a secret letter supporting Johnsons both Washington and Moscow Cut arms sales even More the Supply of state theart weapons was president Anwar Sadat of Egypt noted at the time that a stalemate suited the superpowers and that there was an agreement Between them about the level of arms the agreement unravelled in partly because of the Rise of Middle East tensions and partly because of the american decision to sell f4 fighter bombers to with the end of the cold War there is no excuse for not fashioning similar accords that Are both wider and More Perma zones of potential conflict should be simply there is no other than the appalling financial greed of the industrialized Why the Middle East Ever need go through another spiral of the arms this begs the question Why has the West not faced openly and honestly the problem of israels Possession of nuclear weapons it is going to have otherwise the Arab nations Are always going to be Able to justify massive purchases of new Armor countervailing if we cant see this then we Are deservedly on the Slippery slope that will one Day Lead to those that sell being themselves attacked with the biological and nuclear tipped missiles their incredible Short sight Folly and financial greed allowed to fall into the wrong Jonathan Power is a freelance journalist based in doonesbury by Garry Trudeau 50 we Mouths in kn06uswhatwu by uoulvn7mak5 i tit a Yeow Tattoo n i a ;