Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - August 20, 2006, Winnipeg, Manitoba Submissions to the Winnipeg free press editorial Board View from the West members Are Bob Cox Gerald flood Catherine Mitchell Tom Oleson Dave Obrien cartoonist Dale Cummings Are Welcome. Contact six month View from the West Archive available online at comment editor Gerald flood 697-7269 ? 2006 Winnipeg free press a division of up Canadian Andrew s. Ritchie / publisher newspapers limited partnership Bob Cox / editor Winnipeg free press est 1872 published seven Days a week at 1355 Mountain Avenue Patrick Flynn / Deputy editor b2 Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 Winnipeg Manitoba r2x 3b6, pm 697-7000 View vol 134 no 256 a member of the Manitoba press Council Winnipeg free press sunday August 20, 2006 Radical be pen dictates Frances future the economist w Hile French voters bask in the August Sun Many politicians Are Busy aware that in a few weeks time the 2007 presidential contest will be grabbing headlines. A lot of attention has focused on the Candi dates for the mainstream left and right who now seem Likely to be respectively Segolena Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy. Yet there is a third Force in politics whose voice is less audible but hardly less resonant the far rights Jean Marie be pen. Because the National front Leader has no seat in the French parliament he Seldom makes a big splash in the Media. Yet the 78-year-old sex paratrooper who made it into the 2002 presidential Runoff against Jacques Chirac still wields a Baleful influence Over the body politic. Despite his relative invisibility and voters reluctance to admit supporting him polls consistently give him around 12 to 15 per cent of the National vote. In a fragmented landscape where Chirac secured Only 19.9 per cent in the 2002 first round that is a lot. One poll by tvs sores suggested that be pens popularity in May this year was 18 per cent ? its highest for 10 years. In june 2001, a year before his spectacular breakthrough his rating was barely nine per cent. Why does he remain so popular one reason of course is his crude Appeal to xenophobia and his claim to be the Only politician who fore saw Frances problems in absorbing Immi Grants. After the riots that swept the slum suburbs last year the National front ran a poster Campaign that read immigration explosion of the Banlieue ? be pen told you so in any Case fears Over immigration crime and Security Are now a mainstream concern not just an extremist one. In the words of Robert Badinter a senator there has been a be pen Iza Tion of French minds. These Days when be pen talks about a Migra tory invasion and gives dark warnings that the original population is going to be submerged not everybody is shocked the language of the political Centre has also moved that Way. Apart from fiery rhetoric be pen has some Concrete demands an immediate expulsion of All illegal immigrants and a tightening of the nationality Law. He deplores the recent decision by Sarkozy As Interior minister to Grant amnesty to a third of the illegal newcomers whose children attend French schools. Yet immigrant bashing populism is Only one source of be pens High ratings. Nearly As appealing Are his attacks on the elite ? the close knit political class. The feeling that real Power in France lies with a network of cronies has always been Strong on the communist left As Well As the right and be pen has made skillful use of some recent developments ? including the financial political scandal known As Clear Stream ? that increase that sense. The French no longer Trust their politicians he argues because they have heard Many false promises. Politicians said the euro would bring growth and jobs voters see neither. When Dominique de Villemin the prime minister says unemployment has fallen to nine per cent and will drop to eight per cent next year Many Citi Zens Don to believe him the figures they say must be wrong. Could the far right Leader repeat his 2002 performance next year quite possibly. Fully 23 per cent of voters said in one recent poll that they agreed with be pens ideas and 31 per cent wanted him to stand again. No fewer than 36 per cent guessed he would again make it into the second round. His chances depend largely on who his rivals Are. Polls suggest that if the charismatic Royal were a socialist candidate she and Sarkozy would Breeze into the Runoff. But if fran ois Hollande the socialist party Leader represented the left he might get 19 per cent to be pens 11 per cent ? a closer race. Envisaging a first round score of 15 per cent to 20 per cent for be pen would to be totally absurd says Brice Seinturier of tvs sores. Many things could change before the elec Tion. The fact that the Centre right and the far right Are competing to address fears of immigration could play out in different ways. Sarkozy has been hardening his own anti immigration and Security talk partly in a bid to woo National front voters As a result he would give be pen a harder contest than say de Villemin. How far can Sarkozy go in stealing the National fronts clothes roughly half the party a support is considered solid the remain Der is less so. If the Centre right could win Over half the waver ers it could grab three to four percentage Points. But As Chirac has noted opportunistic politicians May lose at the Centre As Many votes As they gain on the fringe. Anyway be pen is unfazed. We used to be accused of political extremism he says. Now people on the left on the Center on the right use the same Lan Guage. But voters prefer the original to the by Macarena Hernandez i n the pre Dawn hours after the sept. 11 attacks a saudi arabian radiology resident still wearing his Blue pyjamas was handcuffed and whisked from his san Antonio Texas Home by Fri agents. While or. Al Badr . Al Hazumi sat alone in a new York City jail local and National Media spread his stoic looking pass port photo across the country. News stories speculated about whether he was the 20th Hijacker or what role he May have played in the deadliest terrorist attack in . History. At the time i was a reporter for the san Antonio express news and i remember standing in our newsroom watching televisions Flash Al Kazmis photo and hearing a co worker near me mutter the Guy looks like a but what do terrorists look like do they look like the three North Texas men All palestinian americans charged last week with collecting or providing materials for terrorist acts after they bought 80 prepaid cell phones at Wal Mart do they look like the two dozen sus Good architecture is a vital element of education by Steve Cohlmeyer t dirty five years ago it was decided by those who established school design policy that students were at school to learn and that they must not be distracted. This decision led to what seems now a rather bizarre directive that schools were henceforth to be built with no windows. The decision was made in the belief that windowless schools would improve education reduce operating costs protect against vandalism and save Money. Several schools were built without windows but it was quickly discovered that they did not work. Learning performance fell and absenteeism increased. Within three to four years the practice was discontinued and windows were installed in Many of the formerly windowless buildings. From the 1940s through the 1970s there was Strong support for innovative school construction and High Quality design. It was understood that a Well designed environment served every one Well. Learning was improved and Good architecture and planning demonstrated that Manitoba was committed to Quality at All Levels. A number of schools Are still in use from this Era. Many of these buildings remain important works of Manitoba architecture and More important Many remain excellent Environ ments for teaching and learning. At the provincial level the commitment to architectural excellence in educational build Ings has declined and Public funding policy has tended for the past three decades to focus More on budget management than on education and design excellence. It is not Clear Why this change in emphasis occurred though lower Cost at any Cost seems to have been a mantra of government for a number of years. In Manitoba Public school construction is administered by the Manitoba Public schools finance Board psf which in turn operates under the direction of the provincial govern ment. It is the psf a duty to assure that construction budgets Are adequate for new educational construction in the province. When Money is scarce there Are two ways to assure that budgets and costs match one of these is to reduce the Quantity of building that is built and the other is to reduce the Quality of the build Ings that Are built. The psf uses both of these tools to satisfy its budget management duty. Many school districts and their architects have tried to build schools that Are More than the minimal boxes encouraged by the psf. The psf budget allocations Are often inadequate for anything but those minimal boxes. Both the ambitious school districts and the Bud get conscious psf have been frustrated with the process and the results. In 2004, the psf introduced a series of pre Cise standards for the construction of school buildings in Manitoba. These standards Are somewhat unusual in that they have been established As the maximum that is to be built. Even if a building exceeding these standards could be constructed within its assigned budget the psf will not permit designs that violate their standards to receive psf funding. If this policy has grown from a political directive the politicians who issued the directive should think about the message poor Quality in our Public environment sends. If on the other hand the Low standards evolved because the psf wants to please its political masters perhaps the politicians should signal to the psf that the new standards which actively discourage innovation and the values of Well designed environments Are a mistake. The Isbister school Winnipeg school Divi Sion a adult education Centre occupies a prominent downtown site Between Colony Street Vaughan Street and Webb place. The original four Square school sat on its landscaped grounds in a Way similar to Many county courthouses found South of the Border and this rather stately arrangement has always been an inherent part of the buildings charac Ter and Quality. The school was in a decrepit state for 30 years ? surrounded by parking lots Chain link and barbed wire fences and aging trailer class rooms. The building and grounds have recently been renovated a new addition has been constructed and new landscaping has been installed. Viewed from the East from Vaughan Stree the Isbister school still presents itself As a stately courthouse in a Park. On the Colony Side however the character of the building has become quite different. The new addition is adamantly not four Square it stands in an asymmetrical relationship with the original building and the courthouse in the Park is no longer easily recognizable from the West. There was some critical comment about the new addition when it was first completed and i suspect that this arose from the new buildings non historic character and asymmetrical relationship with the original Structure. The design was approved through an extensive process of heritage review and though there May have been other ways to integrate the old and new buildings the new design did pass the litmus test of extensive and collegial review. The addition was designed by Penner Prinz architects. It is a handsome Structure and rep resents a commitment by Winnipeg school division to the downtown and to Quality architecture. In order to support this foray into qual Ity design the school division had to ignore the psf a minimalist policies and overcome its own recent tradition of minimal building. This is risky ground for them and they should be congratulated for their conviction and for their ability to carry it through. Steve Cohlmeyer is a Winnipeg architect. Search for terrorists becomes a Witch Hunt pets believed to be mainly British muslims who were arrested last week after being implicated in a plot to blow up As Many As 10 trans Atlantic Jet liners with liquid explosives one thing is certain they do not look like Al Hazumi who spent 12 Days sitting through countless interrogations and bearing the nations suspicion before he was cleared and released. Overnight a string of coincidences turned the soft spoken devout Muslim into a main suspect. I met him shortly after he returned to san Antonio. A thin slightly built Man not much taller than i Al Hazumi told me How he cried prayed and read the our an during his detainment. When he began to question god about Why this was happening to him he thought about the victims of the sept. 11 attacks and knew his pain could to compare to the families who had lost loved ones. Even though he was cleared Al Hazumi understood there would always be those who would consider him guilty because he had been accused. He tried to resume his life in san Antonio but decided he had to Send his wife and three children Back to saudi Arabia. He had to change his phone number and move out of his two Storey townhouse. Nine months after the ordeal he too returned to saudi Arabia. Know that in every society you have people who Are extreme and peo ple who Are in the Middle he told me a few Days before he left the country. We need to minimize the extreme and maximize the no doubt there Are ruthless terrorists out there relishing our collective panic and fear plotting their next attack. But since sept. 11, too Many cases trumpeted As major Breaks in the fight against terror end up turning into next to nothing. Remember those Wannabe terrorists in Florida who asked an informant for uniforms and the Case involving the three North Texas men has quickly unravelled. Looks like they bought the phones to turn a profit from resale rather than to blow up a Bridge As authorities originally suspected. Though cleared of terror charges the three men have since been arraigned on Federal conspiracy and Money laundering charges. Similarly in a separate incident in Ohio last week two american born men of Arab descent were arrested after their bulk Purchase of cell phones. Charges alleging terrorism have since been dropped there too. Its a dangerous combination ? Law enforcement officials who be been sensitized to jump at anything out of the Ordinary and a hungry Media fill ing pages and airtime with Specula Tion. When suspects Are finally cleared the Story is often buried. Meanwhile its no wonder that so Many in this country have begun to look at Muslim americans As one giant Sleeper cell. In the process of All this craziness an entire Community that should be an essential ally ends up marginalized. After the London arrests news reports indicated it was a Muslim who tipped British authorities after Over hearing a disturbing conversation. This sort of Brave act ? not our own fear ? is what we should be encouraging. We understand that America is scared Diana Houssa Iky the sister of one of the two men arrested and released in Ohio told the associated press. But America needs to under stand that we re part of ? the Dallas morning news ;