Author: Graeme MacKay

Friday January 10, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday January 10, 2020

As Iran and US take step back from the brink, Canada grieves

The worst had passed, it seemed, and the United States and Iran no longer appeared poised at the edge of war.

April 13, 2018

“All is well!” President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday night, days after a U.S. drone strike killed Iran’s most powerful general, and Iran, after a barrage of missiles, had signaled it was stepping back from further escalation.

But 27 seconds before Trump’s tweet, commercial flight trackers had lost contact with a Ukrainian International Airlines jet that had just taken off from Tehran’s main airport. On board were 176 people, including 138 passengers on their way to Canada and at least 63 Canadian citizens and 11 Ukrainians. The plane, which never made a mayday call, slammed moments later into the ground.

Everyone on board died. They were students, newlyweds, doctors and parents. The youngest was a 1-year-old girl, Kurdia Molani, who was flying back home with her parents to the Toronto suburb of Ajax.

January 6, 2016

By late Thursday, Western leaders said that Iran had most likely shot down the jetliner with a surface-to-air missile — probably by accident. The loss of so many lives transformed the U.S.-Iran confrontation, which had seemed to conclude with limited bloodshed.

Instead, what had begun with a drone attack on Gen. Qassem Soleimani’s motorcade at the Baghdad airport had suddenly rippled outward until dozens of Iranian-Canadians, dozens of Iranian students studying in Canada, were dead.

“The community is overwhelmed with mourning and sadness,” said Payman Parseyan, a prominent Iranian-Canadian in western Canada, counting through the names of the friends he had lost. There was Pedram Mousavi and his wife Mojgan Daneshmand, both of them engineering professors, and their two daughters, Daria and Dorina Mousavi. There was Dr. Shekoufeh Choupannejad, an obstetrician-gynecologist, and her two daughters, Saba and Sara Saadat. It seemed impossible.

January 8, 2020

Some in Canada quickly blamed Trump for the disaster.

“This is insane. Sickening. Imagine having a family member on that plane,” said Rob Kent, a 42-year-old Toronto resident. “One man, and only one, is responsible for those deaths. And he will never face consequences for them.”

But Parseyan wasn’t so sure.

“It takes two to tango,” he said. “It’s not hard to see the downing as a result of the escalation between the two countries. However, Iran is responsible for its own military defense equipment. While it has the right to defend itself, as it should to protect its own people, it should also have the responsibility with that right to make sure their defensive systems aren’t targeting civilian aircraft.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has at times had a rocky relationship with Trump, was careful not to say the U.S. strike was responsible for what happened. (Associated Press) 

 

Thursday January 9, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday January 9, 2020

2020’s Horrible First Week

Students, professors, newlyweds, friends and family members died in Wednesday’s crash of a Ukraine International Airlines flight travelling from Tehran to Kyiv.

The disaster that killed 176 people, including at least 63 Canadians, reverberated around the world and across Canada, with vigils taking place in cities with significant Iranian-Canadian communities last night.

Speaking to reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said a total of 138 people missed a connecting flight from Kyiv that landed in Toronto on Wednesday afternoon, suggesting there may be more Canadians killed in the crash.

As a nation continues to grieve, attention will inevitably shift to how exactly the Boeing 737-800 commercial jet crashed just minutes after taking off.  (iPolitics)

President Donald Trump on Wednesday tempered days of angry rhetoric and suggested Iran was “standing down” after it fired missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq overnight, as both sides looked to defuse a crisis over the U.S. killing of an Iranian general. (Reuters)

Two thirds of Puerto Ricans remained without power and nearly a quarter lacked drinking water on Wednesday after earthquakes battered the Caribbean island, including the most powerful to strike the U.S. territory in 102 years. (Reuters)

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was corrected by locals on Kangaroo Island on Wednesday after telling them he was thankful nobody died.

Morrison told a group of residents of the fire-ravaged island: “Well thankfully, we’ve had no loss of life”.

“Two,” one person responded. “We’ve had two.”

Looking to another person for confirmation, he quickly backtracked, claiming he meant first responders, not locals.

“Two. Yes, two, that’s quite right,” he said. “I was thinking about firefighters firstly.” (website 10 Daily)

 

Wednesday January 8, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday January 8, 2020

The Trump We Did Not Want to See

Much of the work of H.P. Lovecraft, an American horror and science fiction writer who worked during the first decades of the 20th century, is defined by individual encounters with the incomprehensible, with sights, sounds and ideas that undermine and disturb reality as his characters understand it. Faced with things too monstrous to be real, but which exist nonetheless, Lovecraftian protagonists either reject their senses or descend into madness, unable to live with what they’ve learned.

June 25, 2019

It feels, at times, that when it comes to Donald Trump, our political class is this Lovecraftian protagonist, struggling to understand an incomprehensibly abnormal president. The reality of Donald Trump — an amoral narcissist with no capacity for reflection or personal growth — is evident from his decades in public life. But rather than face this, too many people have rejected the facts in front of them, choosing an illusion instead of the disturbing truth.

The past week has been a prime example of this phenomenon. On Thursday night, the United States killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran leader of the Islamic Republic’s Quds Force and one of the most powerful military leaders in the region. The strike was sudden and unexpected. The White House notified Congress only after the fact, with a brief, classified document.

May 11, 2018

The assassination of Suleimani was tantamount to a declaration of war and has escalated tensions between the United States and Iran. Tehran has already promised “harsh revenge” against the United States, while Trump said he would  “HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD” if Iran made good on its threat, vowing an attack on “52 Iranian sites” including locations “important to Iran & the Iranian culture.”

This standoff, which in its latest incarnation saw Iranian missiles sailing toward bases in western Iraq on Tuesday night, is so consequential that it’s been hard not to impute some logic to the president’s actions, even as many observers acknowledge the lies and dysfunction surrounding the attack. It’s only natural. As humans, we want to impose order on what we see. As Americans, we want to believe our leaders understand the gravity of war. Traditional news outlets published detailed descriptions of the president’s decision-making process. Sympathetic observers, like Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon, hailed the strike as a “stunning blow to international terrorism and a reassertion of American might.” Cable news analysts spoke as if this was part of a considered plan for challenging the Iranian government. (Continued: New York Times) 

 

Tuesday January 7, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday January 7, 2020

Maybe Sewergate is a turning point for Cootes Paradise

December 7, 2019

On Nov. 21, Royal Botanical Gardens hosted our second open house to inform the public of progress made in our 25-year master plan and to obtain valuable feedback from the community that will help RBG develop a bold new direction through 2045 and beyond.

Our plan aims to address environmental pressures while transforming the Gardens into a world-class tourist destination and leader in conservation and environmental education. The scope of this project will effectpositive societal change for future generations and have significant economic and environmental impacts within southern Ontario and beyond. Naturally, we were very excited to spread the news of our plans at the open house.

September 8, 2018

With coffee in hand, I started that morning with great anticipation, but as I opened The Hamilton Spectator, I was dismayed to read (a now infamous story) that 24 billion litres of sewage and stormwater run-off had leaked into Chedoke Creek.

The focus in the news was on Chedoke Creek. Many people do not realize that Chedoke Creek discharges directly into the eastern corner of Cootes Paradise on its way out to Hamilton Harbour. Many people also do not realize that Cootes Paradise is part of Royal Botanical Gardens lands and that we are the stewards of this incredible area that is part of the Great Lakes System of North America.

January 8, 2008

I was both upset and optimistic with this news, as was Drew Wensley, CEO of MT Planners Ltd. I was upset that the positive news of our master plan would be overshadowed by the news of the spill, yet both of us were optimistic that perhaps now, RBG and Cootes Paradise would finally get the attention they need and, more importantly, deserve.

For almost eight decades, we have been working on improving the water quality of Cootes Paradise to enable the aquatic plants to return, creating a better ecosystem where flora and fauna will thrive. For 25 years, we have been involved in one of the largest fresh-water marsh restoration projects in North America — “Project Paradise” — and as of 2015, we had restored about 50 per cent of the marsh’s vegetation. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator)