Thursday, January 18, 2007

Chutzpah of the Week Award

I am so glad to see that chutzpah rates an entry in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary! My only real question concerned the granularity of making the award. I am sure that I could find a recipient every day, if I put my mind to it; but that would probably end up distracting me from doing more worthwhile things! Perhaps doing it monthly makes more sense, so I shall just have to keep track of how things proceed. In any event the first award goes to the government of Myanmar (sic) on the basis of the following report from Reuters:

Myanmar's military junta has accused democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been in prison or under house arrest for 11 of the past 17 years, of tax evasion for not spending her Nobel Peace Prize money inside the country.

"She avoided paying taxes to the State by asking her family members abroad to spend all her cash awards provided by international organizations and honorariums presented for her works she had created abroad instead of spending the money in the country," the official New Light of Myanmar said on Thursday.

The paper, a mouthpiece of the former Burma's ruling generals, said the 61-year-old opposition leader was lucky to be under house arrest and not in jail for her criticism of the army and its long-running attempts to write a new constitution.

My guess is that this action is likely to set the bar pretty high for any future awards!

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