From the Editor

By Metta Spencer | 1988-08-01 12:00:00

SHIRLEY FARLINGER HAS BEEN A BELOVED and unflagging editor of PEACE for over three years. Her stories have a special touch of warmth and humor. With her eagle-eye for typos and awkward sentences, she's our champion proof-reader. With her immense friendship network of activists (she belongs to about twenty groups), she knows the stones to go after and who can write them. What would we do without her?

But Shirley's name will come off the masthead next time for awhile, with our blessing. No, she's not burned out - quite the contrary! It's just that the magazine is scrupulously nonpartisan, and Shirley isn't. She's running for office.

Guess who she's up against? Perrin Beatty, that's who! She doesn't like his White Paper, so she and the NDP members of his riding have joined forces to show the other voters why they shouldn't either. Nobody says it will be easy. Out around Orangeville, Ontario, Beatty has been popular since he was in his early twenties. But he'd better watch out now! Shirley Farlinger's the sweetest person on earth, but that won't save her opponent from her masterful marshalling of facts. We're granting ourselves enough editorial license to wish her luck.

WE ARE HAPPY to acknowledge with gratitude the speedy decision by the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security to award $12,000 to PEACE. And we also deeply appreciate the support we've received from far and wide while we were trying to make our case. Parliamentarians have been marvellous in writing on our behalf. Thank you all!

Secret Team Update

FOR A YEAR NOW WE'VE BEEN featuring John Bacher's ongoing expose of the twenty-five year saga of a squad of global baddies called "the secret team." Bacher still has several years and several countries yet to cover, but our story's taken a strange turn. The celebrated court case by the Washington-based Christic Institute has been dismissed by the judge. Since the Institute's affidavits are among John's sources, his readers are bound to wonder how this decision reflects on the account they've been reading here. A good question! For several months we've heard munmurs of skepticism about the case that the Christic's lawyer, Daniel Sheehan, was putting together. The journalists covering the story have been fighting each other hard. So we asked Bacher to review the situation, boiling the whole thing down to one page. Do read his appraisal of the evidence about the team's nefarious doings.