For a Tuesday

Quite a bit going on ...




Now Prince Edward Island has joined the pile-on against the carbon tax:

Prince Edward Island and Quebec have joined as interveners in Saskatchewan's legal challenge of the federal carbon tax.

P.E.I. Premier Dennis King said in Ottawa Monday that he does not want to be seen as a Progressive Conservative premier just joining the "resistance" of other conservative provincial leaders across the country fighting the Trudeau government's carbon tax.

Rather, P.E.I. is joining the court challenge simply because the province wants to have the chance to speak up in court, if necessary — possibly even to support the tax, King said.

"Our position could be that perhaps this goes through and they try to kill the (carbon pricing) program, for example, in court, so maybe we would be in a position to work with our other partners to say we don't want the program killed because we believe in a carbon-reduction plan," King said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

It is a scam based on faulty science. Start there. 

Of course it's a tax: 

Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer is vowing that as prime minister he would scrap the clean fuel standard, one of the Liberals’ major environmental policies that to date has received little attention.

In a letter sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday, Scheer referred to the clean fuel standard as a “secret fuel tax,” claiming it will further increase the cost of gasoline on top of the existing federal carbon tax.

“It is … an unprecedented tax that will apply to all fuel sources, including the fuel used for manufacturing and home heating, which will make Canadian businesses less competitive and gas more expensive,” Scheer wrote.

The letter follows the publication of new details about the clean fuel standard in a proposed regulatory approach released by the government on June 28. The measure, which will require the use of cleaner fuels in transportation, industry and buildings, is one of the largest elements of Canada’s climate change plan, to be applied to liquid, solid and gaseous fuels. It’s expected to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 megatonnes a year by 2030, a substantial contribution to Canada’s efforts to reach its targets under the Paris Agreement.

The non-binding Paris Agreement.




I would say the political multiculturalism that holds that FGM is as valid as any Western custom is far more injurious than a ban on religious garb by public employees:

Quebec’s secularism law is causing serious, immediate harm to religious minorities across the province and it must be stayed for the duration of the court challenge against it, lawyers argued Tuesday.

The irreparable harm caused by the law’s application outweighs any negative consequences to Quebec society if it were put on hold for a couple of years pending a full judicial evaluation of the legislation, attorney Catherine McKenzie said.

“There is zero evidence people wearing religious symbols are hurting anyone,” she told Superior Court Justice Michel Yergeau.

Yes, about that:

Protesters in Iran have called for increased security after four women were injured in acid attacks reportedly linked to them not wearing veils.

Also - ah, the glories of multiculturalism: 

A downtown Toronto church has cancelled a youth scholarship event hosted by a Palestinian group that was condemned as “the open glorification of terrorists and murderers.”

The Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship launch party was cancelled after complaints from members of the Jewish community and a decision by the directors of Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church that the event was “inconsistent with church policy.”

Originally scheduled for July 13, the launch party was to feature spoken word, music and food “to celebrate the artistic and cultural contributions of Palestinians in the diaspora,” organizers said in promotional material, and showcase winners of an annual scholarship contest. Written works from the scholarship contest were published in an online anthology entitled We Feel a Country in Our Bones.

The event was organized by the Toronto chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement, which describes itself as “a transnational, independent, grassroots movement of young Palestinians in Palestine and exiled worldwide as a result of the on-going Zionist colonization and occupation of our homeland.”

It's time to hold a referendum on the quality of service before these b@$#@rds walk off with our money: 

Members of Parliament who have decided not to run for re-election this fall will cash in a cumulative $1.6 million in severance payments, and millions more will likely be paid out after the election.

Thirty-nine sitting MPs have declared they won’t run again in the next election, of whom 18 are eligible for severance payments totalling an estimated $1,618,850, according to an analysis by The Canadian Press.

Sitting MPs who have served for less than six years are not eligible for pensions, and instead receive a lump severance payment worth half their annual salary. They also get back any pension contributions they’ve already made, plus interest.

Chretien, fond as any Liberal to do business with communist China, has been hospitalised for kidney stones in Hong Kong: 

Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien was taken to the hospital as a precaution after falling ill in Hong Kong, where he was scheduled to speak on Tuesday at a conference on U.S.-China trade.

This Hong Kong:

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday the extradition bill that sparked the territory’s biggest political crisis in decades was dead, admitting that the government’s work on the bill had been a “total failure.”

The bill, which would have allowed people in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China to face trial, sparked huge and at times violent street protests and plunged the former British colony into turmoil.

This China: 

China’s ruling Communist Party has carried out a widespread crackdown on all religious institutions in recent years, including bulldozing churches and mosques, barring Tibetan children from Buddhist religious studies and incarcerating more than a million members of Islamic ethnic minorities in what are termed “re-education centers.” President and party leader Xi Jinping has ordered that all religions must “Sinicize” to ensure they are loyal to the officially atheistic party.

In contrast, Taiwan’s democratically elected government has long taken a hands-off approach to religion on the island, where most follow Buddhism and traditional Chinese beliefs, but where Christianity and other religions also thrive.

Liao and Ren’s account is the first detailing what has happened since the detentions began at the Early Rain Covenant Church. It shows the determination of the Chinese government — and the lengths it has gone — to eradicate a congregation that has long been a thorn in its side.

How typically North Korea:

The son of a former South Korean foreign minister who fled to North Korea in the 1980s also defected to the North last week, according to the North’s state-run news media.

The minister’s son, Choe In-guk, 73, arrived in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Saturday to “resettle permanently” in the North, a website called Uriminzokkiri, which is run by the North Korean government, said Sunday. The website said that he planned to follow his parents in “dedicating his life to realizing Korean unification.”

Choe is the son of Choe Dok-shin, a former South Korean foreign minister who defected to the North in 1986, becoming the highest-profile South Korean to do so since the 1950-53 Korean War. Choe Dok-shin was also a former military general and had served as South Korea’s ambassador to West Germany.

Also:

A U.S. man accused of taking part in a raid of the North Korean Embassy in Madrid was ordered freed on $1.3 million bail on Tuesday but must serve home confinement ahead of his possible extradition to Spain.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jean Rosenbluth, at a hearing in Los Angeles, warned Christian Ahn, 38, that family members or close friends who posted bail for him could lose their money or property and face contempt of court charges if he fled.

“I spent a lot of time reading about you and I’m confident you’re going to do the right thing,” Rosenbluth told Ahn.

The judge told Ahn he was to remain at home wearing an ankle monitor except for medical appointments and church.

There is a Khan reference in here somewhere:

Canadian bioethicists and genetics experts are speaking out against Denis Rebrikov, the Russian molecular biologist who plans — in defiance of international scientific norms — to alter human embryos using CRISPR gene-editing technology to allow prospective parents with genetic deafness to conceive a child who can hear.

“We are putting ourselves on the path to changing the human evolutionary story. This is not up to one scientist. It’s not up to a group of scientists or a group of political elites. It’s up to all of us,” said Françoise Baylis, a professor of philosophy and bioethics at Dalhousie University who serves on a World Health Organization committee that is developing global standards and oversight for editing of the human genome.

The ethical implications of this kind of rogue science are wide-ranging and nuanced, Baylis explained. But the obvious ones are dire: Making genetic changes to eggs, sperm, or early embryos, collectively called the human germline, affects not only the eventual person these cells may become, but also their offspring.

Interesting:

Museums in Taiwan and Japan on Sunday launched a third attempt to replicate a hypothetical human migration from Taiwan to Okinawa about 30,000 years ago.

The voyage in a dugout canoe is one of multiple research projects signed in 2017 between Taiwan’s National Museum of Prehistory and Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science.

The Taiwanese museum said in a statement that five paddlers — one Taiwanese and four Japanese, including a woman — aboard the 7.6-meter-long wooden canoe made in Japan set off from Taitung County, southeastern Taiwan, at 1:30 p.m.

The plan is that the paddlers will not use any modern equipment such as a compass, watch or smartphone to navigate but instead rely on the stars and wind. If all goes well, the 205-kilometer-long journey to Yonaguni Island in Okinawa Prefecture is estimated to take less than three days, it said.