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An office colleague took the day off yesterday and drove with his family and some friends south on the Klondike Highway to snowmobiling territory, near the summit marking the international boundary between British Columbia and Alaska. It was a perfect day and he took lots of great photos. Here’s one. (Click for larger view.)
I spent the day in the office.
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The headline on David Suzuki’s column in today’s Globe and Mail (co-authored by Dennis DesRosiers) screams, “It’s time to think the unthinkable: Put a tax on gas”. What a joke! If only there were some commodity that government considered untaxable.
It's time to think the unthinkable: Put a tax on gas
Putting a tax on gas is sensitive political territory in Canada — remember Joe Clark's 18-cents-a-gallon gas tax that helped bring down his minority government in 1979? Politicians eschew this environmental and economic public policy imperative despite signs that Canadians are miles ahead of them on the issue.
"Politicians eschew this environmental and economic public policy imperative"? Is he talking about Canadian politicians—or, indeed, politicians anywhere in the known world? Gasoline is one of the most heavily taxed products in virtually every economy on the planet.
This page at Canada’s Department of Finance, dated July 2006, informs us that the federal government levies an excise tax on gasoline of 10 cents per litre, plus GST of 6% of the selling price (on top of all other federal, provincial, and territorial taxes). Provincial and territorial excise taxes range from 6.2 cents per litre in Yukon to 21 cents per litre in Prince Edward Island. As well, of course, provincial sales taxes are tacked on to the purchase price.
Diesel fuel and aviation fuel are also subject to very hefty tax levies.
The federal government snags some $5 billion annually from fuel excise taxes, while the provinces and territories rake in another $8 billion per year.
How could David Suzuki not know all that? Here’s a clue. In reaction to Environment Minister John Baird’s claim that Kyoto implementation would bring on a major economic recession, he had this to say:
Suzuki on Thursday blasted the federal report, saying the government is ignoring the cost of failing to address climate change.
"First of all, let's stop listening to the goddamn economists," he said.
Plainly, David Suzuki has long since taken his own advice on that. He stopped paying attention to economists—and economics—eons ago.
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A Turkish doctor says that the three Christians murdered at the Zirve publishing house were tortured for hours before they died.
Dr. Murat Ugras, a spokesman for the Turgut Ozal Medical center, told the daily Hurriyet of hospital surgeons' fruitless efforts to save Ugur Yuksel, one of the three victims of the massacre at the Zirve (summit) publishing house, which distributed Christian literature.
"He had scores of knife cuts on his thighs, his testicles, his rectum, and his back," Ugras said. "His fingers were sliced to the bone.
"It is obvious that these wounds had been inflicted to torture him," he said.
The two others who were killed, Necati Aydin, pastor of Malatya's tiny Protestant community, and German Tilmann Geske, a Malatya resident with his wife and three children since 2003, were also tortured, press reports said.
Mr Geske died first. The other two were finally killed only when police arrived at the scene.
The photo at right shows people laying flowers at the entrance of the Zirve publishing company in memory of the slain Christians.
Asia News notes that the Turkish media, while reporting copious detailed information about the brutal murders, are strangely silent about the motivations of the young men arrested for the crime.
For years, leading public figures, including government ministers, have loudly lamented Muslim conversions to Christianity. Christians have been accused of “insulting Turkishness” and slandering Islam for merely sharing their beliefs. The fact is that Turkish Christians are immensely saddened but not at all surprised by this week’s atrocity.
Turkish Pastor Ihsan Ozbek from the Church of Salvation: “there is no use in denying it any longer, it was a crime we all anticipated, it came as no great surprise given that we live in a climate where we expect the worst to happen at any given moment, its an open witch hunt against Christians!”.
Radikal, is one of the only papers which, today in a front page article, admits with great clarity that it is pure hypocrisy to shed tears, condemn and denounce this ferocious attack which has been a long time coming and moreover has been fermented by the subtle and poisonous affirmations made by politicians across the political divide.
The question must be faced: Is Turkey the secular state that it claims to be? If so, then it will do whatever is necessary to ensure that religious liberty is respected.
Susanne Geske, the widow of the slain German Christian has publicly forgiven her husband’s murderers.
In an interview with the Turkish television channel ATV the German mother of three quoted Christ's words on the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
. . .
Susanne Geske said she did not harbor any thoughts of revenge. She has been living in Malatya for ten years and intends to stay there.She is hopeful that the aftermath of the murders will signal a new beginning for the relations between Christians and Muslims in Turkey. Many Muslims had shown their outrage about the murders and expressed their condolences to the bereaved.
At least one pastor in Malatya reports that many Turks, including some Muslim clerics, have expressed interest in learning more about Christianity and are more open to talking about the Gospel of Christ.
h/t for Middle East Times: little green footballs
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