Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 25, 2001, Winnipeg, Manitoba B4 Winnipeg free february 2001 1 sunday forum Freedom of Trade Liberty of religion of Quality of civil rights editorial school boards for a bygone Era Are the Public schools of Manitoba Labouring under a manage ment system that no longer serves a worthwhile purpose on grounds of age Manitoba school divisions Are at least the system we have was devised in 1957 and 1958 by a Royal commission of inquiry that showed the government of Duff Roblin How to ease Manitoba ahead from the Era of on room school houses that dotted the that inquiry and some subsequent work gave us the present system of elected boards of trustees running the local supported by Grants from the provincial government and taxing local property to finance additional this system seems beautifully demo the schools belong to communities that Are Large enough to have at least a couple of High schools but Usu ally Small and homogeneous enough that local tastes can be popular sovereignty in what could be More More sensitive to grassroots opinion what could better facilitate a sense of ownership of the schools by the a close link Between neighbourhoods and their schools yet there Are some snakes in this administrative one of the weaknesses came to Light last week when a by election was held to fill a vacancy on the Winnipeg school Divi Manitoba most Power Ful and in some ways most progressive education the by election was held in Ward which includes the River Heights District of lawyers and University professors and the Wolseley District of Granola crunching artists and nine candidates votes were cast by of the eligible voters for a turnout of per the Winner was elected with this was the pulsating heart of school Board democracy in the patient proved to have almost no detectable if this were a Hospital emergency the Winnipeg school division should now have electrodes pressed to its Chest while heroic efforts Are made to restore it to some thing resembling institutions being what they the Winnipeg school division can continue its routine procedures Long after clinical death has the government and the pub Lic need not there is a How to consider whether the patient should be sent to surgery or allowed to slip gently into the Core of the problem is this schools in Manitoba Are owned and operated by school divisions that Are controlled by school trustees elected by the the people and the trustees they take Only a fitful and inconsistent interest in the schools they own and the min ister of education plays a Large role by controlling the flow of Money and Power through the system but he Nei ther owns nor operates schools and has no direct responsibility for what Hap pens in any school in the principals and superintendents play Large roles but they do not own the they do not decide on the programs and they do not have to come up with the Money to finance they Are the hired they have to act As though they own the schools when the trustees and the pub Lic fail to but there Are severe Lim its to what they can the Public schools of Manitoba Are in this sense administrative and Politi Cal their nominal the citizens and take less interest than owners need to the minister and the hired help More or less run the system though they have no authority to do so and no Power to mobilize the kind of Money it would take to do the Job the parents of Manitoba show Good Confidence in the Public Pri vate and parochial schools Are Avail Able in All parts of the if the Public schools were really the fam Ilies of Manitoba would be voting with their feet or with their childrens private and parochial schools serve Between five and 10 per cent1 of the Manitoba primary and secondary the Public holding the loyalty of the other 90 per must be doing something but in an Era of steady social and technological schools should aim higher than merely doing some thing they should be organized for restless they should be run by people who Are Atten Tive and committed without being insiders of the they should be Distant enough from the classroom to grasp what schools should be accomplishing and to recognize where they May be they should have the Power to set new directions for schools and abandon old they should be accountable to schools and to the wider Public for misjudgments and Malad Manitoba Laws establish an elaborate relationship Between the schools and the Public that pays for them and supposedly controls them through elected that relationship has gradually been drained of the Money still flows but that is All and that is not it is probably time for another exercise like the 1957 Royal commission to find new owners for the schools of owners who will move the schools Forward into this new peacetime spying is quite pointless its an impressive list Cia official Aldrich Ames jailed for life in 1994 for spying for Moscow Cia agent Harold Nicholson jailed for 23 years in 1997 for the same offence Fri employee Earl Pitts sentenced to 27 years later the same year for passing information to Moscow army colonel George Trofimoff charged last year for spying for the russians for 25 years and now senior Fri agent Robert Hanssen charged with working for Moscow for 15 assuming that Only a fraction of the americans with High Security Clear ances who Are on Moscow payroll Actu ally get then the total number must run into the maybe even the which raises two ques one is Why so Many americans want to spy for foreign there is no suggestion that ideological sympathies had any role in the recent so perhaps we should just put it Down to the spirit of free the More interesting question is Why the russians they obviously put a lot of Effort into but what do they get out of it so far As we no russian spy in the United states in the past 50 years has Given Moscow any information that had the slightest effect on the course of events in the real perhaps my own experience with a soviet spy Recruiter can throw some Light on How things really having turned Down an approach from the Cia when i was living in Istanbul in 1971 i was Only doing research on the last Days of the ottoman but maybe they were interested in my turkish i returned to London and fell into the hands of the it All happened because i had a Friend who was a soviet Exchange Mikhail we used to end the week with a tour of the pubs around rus sell and he spent the weekend with my family a couple of times and then the year was up and he had to go when i met him for a Farewell he brought along another Man whom he with some As the cultural attache at the soviet Vasili the latter Chat Ted aimlessly for a few and then took his a month later i heard from who invited me to knowing perfectly Well where this was i nominated one of the Best restaurants in he showed great interest in my research he would have been equally fascinated if i was studying origami or migratory and had the tact not to pop the question right he sent me twin bottles of Vodka in a gift with a note inviting me to lunch this he got Down to he was he about British Stu Dent could i write him a report on the various just to clarify his thinking it was the classic routine get the potential recruit to do anything of an intelligence nature for however and you have him so i and said id been wondering what approach he would he want a very serious spy he laughed and abandoned the but there was still some wine so i asked him Why on Earth he had tried to recruit what did i know that could be of any use Noth he but he needed another name on his his budget was written for a certain number of informants in and one of his existing ones had been killed in a traffic Accident last he had to get a new name to replace him and make up the or they Cut his it is just a huge amounts of Money get hundreds of thousands of people Are and some of them go to jail or even get but it is All quite in Good operational Intelli gence can make a big but in peacetime including the whole cold War the whole Gigantic machinery of espionage is pure most of those engaged in it Are cynical drones like or romantic or greedy in at the it seems to be the latter who what was said the following editorial appeared in fridays los Angeles times Bill Clinton says he had no idea that his attorney Hugh took Money to lobby for presidential pardons Tor two convicted though he Doest deny he knew of Rod hams involvement in both Hillary Rodham says she knew Noth ing about her Brothers though she had heard and was heartbroken and shocked when she found both Clinton say they asked Rodham to return the he was paid for his intervention on behalf of convicted drug dealer Carlos Vignali and Almon Glenn who was convicted in 1983 of perjury and mail Rodham says he has returned the but that hardly disposes of the former president Clinton maintains that All of the 176 pardons and com mutations he granted on his last Day in office were either to mod Erate what he saw As excessively harsh sentences or because he concluded that the recipients of his clemency had redeemed themselves through Good the falsity of that assertion grows More apparent by the More than a score of the pardons Clinton granted were the result of direct appeals to the White bypassing the usual review by the Justice department and with Little or no notice to the Federal prosecutors who knew the most about the Vignali benefited from the ability of his a los Angeles business Man and Large contributor to the democratic to get prominent Public figures to write letters or make Calls in his sons Federal prosecutors fear that the Braswell Pardon could jeopardize a current investigation of him involving other criminal the common thread in the most controversial of the cases int unless Merit is spelled Access and influence were gained through donations to political campaigns or the Clinton presidential Library or by the intervention of a Clinton Friend or one such relative was Roger who unsuccessfully asked his brother for pardons or commutations for eight to 10 persons he its no secret that the ethical Stop lights in the Clinton White House often worked on his final Day in office they appear to have failed congressional hearings into what was evidently a sweeping abuse of the presidents clemency Power will resume next the attorneys office in new York is quietly continuing its whether Laws were broken remains to be there can be no that a Gross breach of Faith has to wasteland blooms in boredom Christopher Dafoe we broke Down and bought a new Tele vision set the Vintage electro Home was almost 30 years old and still working Well but Nancy and i Felt that the time had come to invest in an up Odate Model that you could turn on and off from a seated position at the far Side of the viewing she also pointed out that the mute option would be useful now that there seem to be crispy later commercials and other maddening distractions every tworan Dahal the new Appa Ratus has a very Flat screen and no knobs that i have been Able to although we did find some mysterious red buttons behind a Small when i pressed them nothing although it May explain the sudden increase in my Cable the magic Wand or whatever you Call it that controls the operation of our new to is covered with buttons of Vari Ous sizes and shapes in red and if you touch the wrong Button or inadvertently sit on the Wand or if a cat Steps on detailed instructions for launching mis Siles or record ing programs at a certain Day and hour next month appear on the these Mes sages can Only be removed from the screen with great difficulty after you have pushed most of the buttons on the Wand and encountered further detailed instructions for doing things you would never have thought of doing curiously our both aged seem Able to Clear the screen of unwanted messages in under 10 Sec i suppose you have to be born to our new television has a Var attached to it and we in record pro Grams for later it is so comply that even the Man from the Cable company was unable to make it our Var will show rented although even that was a prob Lem until somebody mentioned that you had to turn the set to Channel 3 in order to make it a lot of the films i want to rent and look at have a a Del English subtitles that Are so Small that it is almost impossible to read them and still pay attention to the action in the White subtitles against a White background Are also hard to Cope i suppose i could learn now that we Are equipped with a Well appointed and up Odate television receiver we have As Many that there Are hardly any programs Worth watching most we seem to have about 50 but when we sit Down with the idea of watching some every Channel seems to be show ing the same inane program about Young office workers or a rerun of some pro Gram that we never watched Back in the one Channel that Calls itself the new style arts Channel shows two cop shows Bac Toback in prime time from monday to thursday and some thing about Young office workers going to bed with each other at the another Channel has been showing the same British detective series for at least a i am not really interested in although a series running on both Fox and Yov is written by my As for that i have no interest in who is going to be kicked off the Pioneer Farmers in Manitoba have my after they there Are too Many cooking too Many prayer meetings and i was not amused the other night to be confronted by a Gigantic Penis on what appears to be a nonstop sexual advice we usually seem to end up watching a news although can is so provincial in its View of the world that if China invaded India can would Only cover it if an american tourist got run Over by a chinese tank while sipping a Coke at the Simla Csc new world is not much although the Csc seems to be aware that significant events occasionally take place outside i do Howe that they would just give us the news and leave out the special the new Csc news format is particularly revolting with its strident flashing lights and spinning you imagine that something really spectacular is about to take that at the very least Jesus will appear in glory and announce that it is time to face the music and but it is just Peter mans Bridge in a Blue looking More than usually ;