And then there is this:
4. Quebec Corruption The former CEO of Quebec corporate giant SNC Lavalin has been arrested and charged in the ballooning corruption scandal. Pierre Duhaime was arrested at his home yesterday. He faces three charges - fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and using forged documents - related to the engineering firm's contract to design, build and maintain the McGill University Health Centre's new $1.3-billion superhospital. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of michael gurstein Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 7:12 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Extraordinary honesty I was once on a subway in Vienna, leaving back for Canada the next day. I absent mindedly left my laptop on the seat and moved to the platform. After a minute or so I realized what I'ld done and frantically tried to figure out something but not having the language and being very restricted for time I could only leave my name with the lost and found and the police station. About two months later I got a handwritten letter from the guest house where I had been staying asking me if I had lost my computer. I immediately called them and said yes and they put me in touch with a somewhat elderly Viennese couple to whose English speaking daughter I explained what had happened and who in turn explained to me that they had found the laptop on the subway, found the card of the guesthouse in the pocket, phoned the guest house etc.etc. M From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 4:02 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Extraordinary honesty My wife lost her purse in a crowded local superstore recently. There was quite a lot of money in it, plus credit cards, etc. When she realized she had done that, she dashed back to the store and to the lost and found counter. She was handed her purse. Everything was in it. Nothing had been taken. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION <mailto:[email protected]> ; de Bivort Lawrence <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 4:39 AM Subject: [Futurework] Extraordinary honesty Hi Lawry, I've changed the thread for the purpose of this particular posting because it concerns the subject of Islam you're interested in. It was triggered off by your mention of Turkey where a remarkable example of honesty occurred some 12/15 years ago. I was in a foursome touring Turkey. One afternoon, the husband of the other couple decided he wanted to look the university in Istanbul. On the way there, while walking through a park he had a stroke (or something to the same effect) which rendered him comatose. This occurred early in the afternoon. He was still lying there in the early evening, when it was finally realized that an ambulance needed to be called for. Meantime, because he hadn't returned to the hotel, I'd been ringing round all the hospitals in the city. By coincidence, the hospital I happened to be ringing (the 19th) had just received him -- so he'd obviously been lying in the park for several hours. When I picked him up from the hospital a few days later he suddenly realized that he didn't have his wallet (with a great deal of Turkish money) or his (expensive) camera and attachments. Magically, a policeman suddenly appeared with the very same items and handed them over. I often wonder whether my friend's ownership of his wallet and camera would have survived a similar event in the park of an advanced country without a predominant Islamic culture. Keith . At 21:52 28/11/2012, you wrote: Greetings, everyone, This matter of corruption -- and especially corruption of intent -- is beautifully laid out in an extraordinary Turkish movie, Takva: a Man's Fear of God. I don't want to give the story away by commenting on it here, but will say that it explores this matter deeply and with great authenticity, intelligence, and integrity. Plus, it is a riveting movie. Our local library has a copy, and so yours may, too. Enjoy! Lawry On Nov 28, 2012, at 4:38 PM, Ed Weick wrote: Perhaps the only way to be a completely incorruptible person in today's world is to sit on a mountaintop or to isolate oneself in a little stone cell in the depths of a monastery, but even that may not work. There really isn't much room for purists and idealists. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION <mailto:[email protected]> ; Ed Weick <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 12:12 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] There's more there than I thought Ed, The big difference between corruption of senior politicians and officials in China and that in the West is that the former speak about it openly as being a (continuing) problem while the latter pretend that it only happens rarely. It takes slightly different forms in the two countries. In China, bribes (usually in the form of shares) are given to close relatives. In the West it's more of a nod to the recipient that if he "helps" someone he'll be well looked after once he's retired. There's nothing truer than the old saying: "Every man has his price". Even if the price is reputational rather than financial, it is never the case (IMO) that an attempt at bribery is met with indifference. In the present Tory government in the UK it would be my opinion that most of present senior cabinet, including Cameron, plus several Permanent Secretaries (the top officials in civil service departments) have been bribed with the promise of good jobs later (e.g. directorships, consultancies, top jobs with the European Union, etc). In the previous government under Labour, it was more of a case of the politicians 'consolidating' hundreds of key supporters with high salaries and perks in new 'quasi non-governmental organizations' (quangos) which carry out newly-invented civil service type functions. In the case of the previous prime minister, Tony Blair, he's been living off several different streams of income ever since he retired. Psychologists tell us that children tell fibs and devise strategies designed to hoodwink others from only three years of age. This suggests that deviousness is built into us genetically. This ability to deceive is particularly necessary in any ambitiousness male not wishing to upset males of higher social ranking (until the right moment to strike comes along!). Sensible governmental constitutions in the future will not appeal to idealistic abstractions but how to make its financial operations as open as possible. Keith At 15:52 28/11/2012, you wrote: Keith Hudson and I had a brief exchange on the merits of Chrystia Freeland's "Plutocrats". Both of us were bored after the first forty pages or so. He suggested that I read the concluding chapter and give up on the rest of the book. I almost did that but then decided I'd look at the book here and there and, lo and behold, I've found some interesting things. Thus far I've read some of the material on "rent-seekers", plutocrats who capture an increasing portion of existing wealth rather than producing "value-added" wealth themselves. The American and European financial sectors are outstanding examples. Working in an environment of decreasing regulation, many people in the field have become very rich via the invention and refinement of a large variety of securities and by shifting much of the risk of doing so onto the public sector, knowing full well that government would see them as too big to fail and bail them out if things went wrong. Things did indeed go wrong in 2008, and with some exceptions like Lehman Brothers, government did bail them out, imposing enormous costs on the public sector. I guess those of us who've paid any attention to the economy in the past few years already knew much of that, but Freeland includes a lot of extra information and detail that we couldn't have known unless we were journalists in the middle of it all, as she was. However, there was one thing that was new to me in what I read this morning. That was the role played by "rent-seekers" in China's conversion from what was supposed to have been a workers' paradise into plutocrat run state capitalism. According to Freeland, China is as corrupt at the top as America, Europe and oligarchic Russia. I found that rather painful because it wasn't supposed to be like that. When I was young and highly idealistic, I followed the Chinese Revolution very closely and greatly admired Mao Zedong. Mao was going to show us all what the world could really be like. Well, what seems to have transpired in reality is another road to hell paved with good intentions. I'll quit here, but may post more as I read more bits and pieces of Freeland's book. Ed _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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