The statements, opinions, or views in the articles may not necessarily reflect that of the Goan Voice Canada.

Former Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, was done in by pride
Written by Catholic Register Staff,
http://www.catholicregister.org/content/view/3136/40/
Thursday, 28 May 2009

A former prime minister should know it is wrong to accept envelopes stuffed with $225,000 in cash from a shady businessman and hide the cash in vaults where the taxman can’t find it.

At one point at the Oliphant commission, former prime minister Brian Mulroney shamelessly harrumphed: “I have never knowingly done anything wrong in my entire life.”

Sadly, he may have been telling the truth — not that he has never done anything wrong, but this vainglorious man, apparently lacking a civilized notion of propriety, may genuinely be unaware that egregious unethical behaviour is wrong.

Thomas Aquinas taught that pride was the first sin and the source of all other sins. Pride, said Aquinas, is rejection of God’s authority and plan in favour of an excessive desire for one’s own excellence. It is the worst among the seven deadly sins and is revealed by narcissism, arrogance, vanity and greed.

Mulroney’s mirror apparently does not reflect the face of sinful pride. He seems incapable of seeing what others see and knowing what others know. A former prime minister should know it is wrong to accept envelopes stuffed with $225,000 in cash from a shady businessman and hide the cash in vaults where the taxman can’t find it. He should know it is wrong to fleece Canadian taxpayers for a $2.1-million settlement from a defamation lawsuit in which he testified under oath to barely knowing the shady businessman who had given him $225,000 in cash. He should know it is wrong to manipulate the tax system — and Canadian taxpayers — by hiring a lawyer to hastily arrange an anonymous tax settlement on undeclared income only after his skulduggery was to become public, and even then paying tax on only half the ill-begotten cash.

Mulroney’s defence to all this is two-fold: to claim he has broken no laws and, in his best “woe is me” baritone, to blame everyone but his barber for his misfortune. With respect to his criminal virginity, that’s for others to determine, but Mulroney has offered no plausible explanation for why an honest man requires protection of an anonymous amnesty program before fessing up about large sums of cash brought undeclared across the border and about years of incomplete tax returns.

The blame for all these peculiar money matters, says Mulroney, rests with many people, including the shady businessman, the skilled lawyers who hoodwinked the taxman and the chump government lawyers who failed to ask the precise questions that might expose Mulroney’s duplicity. He even blamed the secretary he didn’t hire leaving him with no one to record his secret payments or buy him a pencil so he could do it himself.

Mulroney hoped the Oliphant inquiry would salvage his reputation. Given the extent of the flim-flammery, that outcome was unlikely. He might have softened the damage, however, by admitting wrongdoing, accepting responsibility, expressing remorse and offering apologies — and then paying back settlement and tax windfalls he finagled from Canadian taxpayers. But that about-face would have required a conversion to Christian humility, a virtue that is rare today in general society and, apparently, extinct in some circles.

Michael Moore: 9 Ways to Rise From GM's Ashes
http://www.newser.com/story/60686/michael-moore-9-ways-to-rise-from-gms-ashes.html

(Newser) – The end of General Motors is an opportunity for an America that now owns 60% of the company, writes Michael Moore. Let’s take advantage of the death of a firm that built poor cars, battled environmental rules, and shipped jobs away by using its facilities to implement a new system of transportation in America. Moore presents nine suggestions to the president on HuffPo:

• As we did after Pearl Harbor, Obama "must tell the nation that we are at war" and quickly convert GM factories into ones that produce mass-transit vehicles, windmills and solar panels, and, for the time being, hybrid and electric cars.

• "Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years” and have the unemployed build them. Japan’s had them for 45 years—and they can get us from New York to LA in 17 hours.

• Give a tax break to people using hybrid cars or mass transit.

• Pay for all of this—and get people to make the switch—by tacking a $2 tax on every gallon of gas.

For the complete list of Moore's suggestions, click here

Our facile Goan Catholic Society
By Selma Carvalho
Posted on www.goanet.org
Sat May 23 2009

Typical Goan Conversation “How is Uncle Carmo? How is Uncle Carmo's grandmother? How is Uncle Carmo's cat? Ok then bye”

Every time I am in Goa, I can't help but be amazed at how facile and superficial our Goan Catholic society has become. We have created and embraced a culture of wine and song; an endless round of celebrations be it weddings, anniversaries or funerals.

Every weekend is an occasion to numb oneself in mindless conversation, graduating the banal to great heights of intellectual curiosity. This is a typical conversation..Hello, hello, my God have not seen you for so long..How is Uncle Carmo? How is Uncle Carmo's grandmother? How is Uncle Carmo's cat? Ok then bye hanv. And to go along with these conversations, perhaps in a attempt to further anesthetize any semblance of intelligence in our society, we have to have a healthy dollop of excessive drinking, food bingeing and frenzied dancing.

I really wonder what it would take, especially for our women, to show some interest in conversations that don't revolve around babies and babas, where to find good bebica (swear to God this is a conversation in Goa) or what they bought at the Panjim exhibition sale? What would it take for our society for just one second to stop spinning on this vacuous merry-go-round and invest instead perhaps in the reading habit, buy a good book, discuss the paper, take up a hobby or visit a museum? Best,selma