2021-28

Friday August 20, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 20, 2021

Not the Bad Guys Anymore

When the Taliban first sacked Kabul 25 years ago, the group declared that it was not out for revenge, instead offering amnesty to anyone who had worked for the former government. “Taliban will not take revenge,” a Taliban commander said then. “We have no personal rancor.” At the time of that promise, the ousted president, Mohammad Najibullah, was unavailable for comment. The Taliban had castrated him and, according to some reports, stuffed his severed genitals in his mouth, and soon after, he was strung up from a lamppost.

November 14, 2001

The reports from Kabul are probably more reassuring to those unfamiliar with this history. The Taliban has once again declared a general amnesty, and asked everyone to show up for work in the morning and prepare to unite behind a Taliban government that will rule according to Islamic law—but perhaps, the group has suggested, not in the harsh manner that made it infamous during its rule from 1996 to 2001. Women can continue their education so long as they wear the hijab, and the Taliban will guarantee human rights and freedoms of speech and expression, it said, so long as they comply with sharia. (Spoiler: The Taliban does not believe they do.) A Taliban spokesperson consented to an interview with a female television presenter whose face was visible. During the Taliban’s previous regime, it discouraged depiction of the human form, and would certainly not have countenanced the broadcast of a woman’s face to the entire world.

The Taliban now owns Afghanistan, and its first priority is avoiding anything that resembles chaos. In 1996, the group’s leader, Mullah Omar, told residents of Kabul to resist the temptation to flee, that the Taliban would keep them safe. Omar died in 2013, but his successors—who include his own son, the Taliban’s top military official—are saying exactly the same thing now. They have made sure the police phone number works, and they are calling for workers, including cops formerly loyal to the previous government, to report for duty. The Afghans I have reached by phone in Kabul say the same: Taliban are in the streets, acting not as avengers but as guarantors of public order. They are not executing people on street corners; instead they’re watching for looters and troublemakers. (The Taliban has always returned to this core role, since the movement’s founding: In the 1990s, when the Afghan countryside was beset by highwaymen, murderers, and rapists, the group won its first followers by securing the roads and providing order where the worst kind of anarchy had reigned.) (Continued: The Atlantic) 

August 17, 2021

Meanwhile, in Canada, there may be no better example of the unique and difficult challenge Erin O’Toole faces as leader of the federal Conservative Party than his recently announced policy on mandatory vaccinations.

Mr. O’Toole is against measures that force Canadians to get vaccinated, regardless of what line of work they may be in. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has said federal workers must be vaccinated, as well as anyone who wants to fly or travel by train.

The Conservative Leader says he believes in the power and safety of vaccines, but doesn’t feel people should be forced to take them. Mr. Trudeau doesn’t believe people should be forced to take them either, but nor should the unvaccinated have the right to potentially pass COVID-19 on to others. Thus, the mandate.

July 15, 2021

A majority of Canadians are fully or partially vaccinated. And most of them, polls suggest, support vaccine mandates or vaccine passports that bestow certain rights and privileges on those who have chosen to get jabbed. In his heart, I think Mr. O’Toole believes this also. He just can’t endorse that policy because it would alienate a faction of his base – the libertarians and vaccine deniers – who think the state has no right imposing restrictive measures on anyone. These are voters Maxime Bernier and his People’s Party of Canada are trying to steal away from the Conservatives.

Welcome to Erin O’Toole’s world – or rather, his nightmare. While his central challenger in this election, Justin Trudeau, can be many things to many people, the Conservative Leader does not have that option. He is bound, in many ways, to a segment of the population resistant to change and who are suspicious of government intrusions of any sort into their lives, regardless of the reason. (Continued: Globe & Mail)

L E T T E R S  to the  E D I T O R  The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday August 21, 2021

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, August 23, 2021

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, August 24, 2021

Social Media chatter:



 

Thursday August 19, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday August 19, 2021

Ontario announces mandatory vaccine plans for health, education workers; 3rd doses for some

Employers in Ontario’s public education and several key health-care settings will need to have COVID-19 vaccination policies in place for staff in the coming weeks, the province announced Tuesday.

July 21, 2021

As the provincial government navigates a fourth wave of the pandemic, it issued a news release saying the policies are required to help combat spread of the highly infectious delta variant as fall and winter approach. 

Ontario will therefore remain in the final step of its “Roadmap to Reopen” plan for now, pressing pause on further lifting remaining restrictions and workplace safety measures — despite surpassing vaccination targets. The province will also offer booster shots to certain vulnerable populations and expand eligibility for vaccination to children turning 12 this year.

Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, announced the new measures at a news conference in Toronto Tuesday afternoon.

“We are preparing aggressively for the fall. I’m sorry to say I think it’s going to be a difficult fall and winter,” he told reporters.

Moore has said he expects cases to rise further in the fall when people move indoors, particularly among youth and young adults who are the least-vaccinated demographics and will gather in classrooms in September. 

Moore alluded to the possibility that additional immunization measures could come later in the year if needed, but didn’t state outright what those might look like, saying most of the policies he wants to see implemented are in place and more details will follow in the coming weeks. 

July 3, 2021

“Any orders would be targeted, focused and time-limited,” he said. “We want to minimize disruption of our economy going forward and minimize disruption to our schools.”

Moore has issued a directive to hospitals and community and home-care service providers to have a strict vaccination and testing policies in place by Sept. 7 for all employees, staff, contractors, students and volunteers. Ambulance services will also need to have policies in place for paramedics.

The directive doesn’t make COVID-19 vaccination compulsory, but those who decline the shots will need to undergo regular antigen testing for the virus. It’s similar to one already in place in the province’s long-term care homes. 

Staff at health-care facilities will need to provide proof of full immunization against COVID-19 or a medical reason for not being vaccinated. Those who don’t get the shots will need to complete an education session about COVID-19 vaccines and will be routinely tested for the virus before coming to work.

Some Ontario hospitals such as Toronto’s University Health Network have already introduced staff vaccination policies along the same lines as the government’s plans. (CBC) 

 

Wednesday August 18, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday August 18, 2021

Russia and the U.S. share the blame for the terrible fate facing Afghan people

In the year 2000, five years after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, nobody elsewhere cared what happened in that landlocked, benighted country. It was ruled by angry rural fanatics who tormented the local people with their demented rules for proper “Islamic” behaviour, but it was not a military or diplomatic priority for anybody.

July 15, 2021

It is about to return to that isolated and isolationist existence. Neither then nor now do the Taliban even have a foreign policy. They are more like a franchise operation whose various elements share certain basic principles — e.g. foreigners, women and democracy are bad — but whose members are primarily focused on local issues and personal ambitions.

This is not the first time that the country has been in such a mess, and about the only useful thing that the current lot of foreign invaders can do on their way out is offer refuge abroad to as many as possible of the Afghans who trusted their promises. That will certainly not be more than 10 or 20 per cent of those who earned their protection.

The Russians and the Americans share the blame for this catastrophe. It’s hard to believe that an uninvaded Afghanistan could have peacefully evolved into a prosperous democratic society with equal rights for all, but “uninvaded” is the only condition in which it could conceivably have approached that goal.

There was the germ of such a locally-led modernization process in the overthrow of the king in 1973 and the proclamation of an Afghan republic. Other Muslim-majority states have made that transition successfully — Turkey did, for example, despite its current government — but the Afghan attempt did not prosper.

Violent resistance by traditional social and religious groups started at once, and the tottering new republican regime was overthrown in 1978 by a bloody military coup. The young officers who seized power were Marxists who imposed a radical reform program.

February 2, 2019

They gave women the vote and equal access to education, carried out land reforms, and even attacked the role of religion. By 1979, the Marxist regime was facing a massive revolt in conservative rural areas, and one faction asked for Soviet military help.

The moribund Communist leadership in Moscow agreed, and 100,000 Soviet troops entered the country. The subsequent war devastated the country for a decade — with much help from the United States.

“The day that the Soviets officially crossed the (Afghan) border, I wrote to president Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the U.S.S.R. its Vietnam War,” said former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. He immediately started sending money and weapons to the rural rebels who later became the Taliban.

It took 10 years, $40 billion of clandestine U.S. military aid, and around a million Afghan dead, but by 1989 the Taliban and their various Islamist rivals forced the Russians to pull out. Shortly afterwards the Soviet Union collapsed, and Brzezinski arrogantly but implausibly claimed credit for it.

“What is most important to the history of the world?” he asked. “The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” 

In reality, the Soviet Union was heading for collapse anyway, but the “stirred-up Muslims” turned out to be a fairly large problem.

The Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996 after a long all-against-all war between the various Islamist groups, and ruled most of the country badly and brutally for five years. Then an Arab Islamist called Osama bin Laden abused the hospitality of the Taliban leader Mullah Omar by launching the 9/11 attacks against the United States in 2001.

November 14, 2001

An American invasion was inevitable after 9/11 because some spectacular retaliation was politically necessary. That led to another 20 years of war: the Taliban against another set of foreigners who understood little about the country’s recent history and why it made local people profoundly mistrustful of “helpful” foreigners.

Even now Americans don’t realize how closely they have recapitulated the Soviet experience in the country. The ending that is now unfolding was foreordained from the start, although it has taken twice as long to arrive because the United States is much richer than Russia. Nevertheless, the aftermath will also be the same.

The various factions of the Taliban will split, mostly on ethnic lines, and another civil war of uncertain length will follow. The rule of the winners will be as cruel and arbitrary as it was last time. And the rest of the world will rapidly lose interest, because Afghanistan won’t pose a serious threat to anywhere else. (Gwynne Dyer – The Hamilton Spectator)  

 

Tuesday August 17, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday August 17, 2021

Erin O’Toole opposes mandatory vaccination for federal public servants, travellers

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole said late Sunday he is opposed to mandatory vaccinations for federal public servants and instead prefers a regular rapid testing regime to keep workplaces safe from COVID-19.

July 21, 2021

O’Toole ducked questions for nearly a week about the Liberal government’s plan to implement a vaccine mandate for bureaucrats, transportation workers and most passengers travelling by air and rail, a program Ottawa says will help boost stalled vaccination rates at a time when COVID-19 case counts are on the rise.

O’Toole said the Liberal plan is a divisive one and Canadians instead “want a reasonable and balanced approach that protects their right to make personal health decisions.”

Rather than require public servants and travellers to get a shot, O’Toole said, if elected, he’d demand they pass a rapid test before going to work or boarding a bus, train, plane or ship.

“What they do not want is the politicization of the pandemic. Vaccines are not a political issue. To try and make them one is dangerous and irresponsible,” O’Toole said.

May 8, 2021

“We should be united on this, not divided, and Conservatives will not engage in this attempt to drive a wedge between Canadians.”

Asked later about the party’s position during a virtual press conference with reporters, O’Toole said that while Conservatives encourage everyone eligible to get a shot, “Canadians have the right to make their own health care decisions.”

“We have a reasonable and effective approach that respects Canadians” who cannot or will not get a shot, O’Toole said.

The Conservatives have been highly critical of the government’s handling of the immunization campaign and the procurement process for COVID-19 shots, suggesting for weeks that Canada was at the “back of the line” on deliveries, that the government “botched” the vaccine rollout and that it may not be “until 2030” that people are vaccinated.

After a slow start in the early months of this year, Canada is now a world leader in immunizations with more than 81 per cent of the eligible population vaccinated with at least one dose. But the pace of administering doses has slowed considerably since a blitz in April and May, with well below 100,000 first shots handed out each day.

Based on a CBC News estimate, more than 5.7 million eligible Canadians have still not received a dose even though there is ample supply in virtually all parts of the country. (CBC) 

 

Saturday August 14, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday August 14, 2021

Canada is headed for a federal election on Sept. 20

Canadians will head to the polls on Sept. 20.

July 23, 2021 – NonStop speculation

Following a meeting with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau this morning, Gov. Gen. Mary Simon approved his request to dissolve Parliament, triggering the issuing of the election writs and formally beginning Canada’s 44th federal election.

The campaign will last 36 days — the minimum campaign length permitted by law.

Opposition parties have argued against an early election call. Canada’s next fixed-date election was set for October 2023.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh went so far as to urge Simon to refuse Trudeau’s request. Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole said Monday he was concerned about holding a campaign during a fourth wave of the pandemic and accused Trudeau of pursuing an election in his own political “self-interest.”

From the podium outside of Rideau Hall this morning, Trudeau pushed back against his critics, saying Canadians deserve a chance to decide who should guide the country out of the pandemic.

“In this pivotal, consequential moment, who wouldn’t want a say? Who wouldn’t want their chance to help decide where our country goes from here?” he said.

July 9, 2021

“So to the other parties, please explain why you don’t think Canadians should get a choice, why you don’t think that this is a pivotal moment. I’m focused on our real plan. I’m focused on the path forward.”

At dissolution, the Liberals hold 155 seats in the House of Commons, while the Conservatives have 119, the Bloc Québécois 32, the New Democrats 24 and the Green Party two. Five seats are held by independents.

The federal Liberals continue to hold a lead in public polling, capturing 35.6 per cent of public support against 28.8 per cent for the Conservatives and 19.3 per cent for the NDP, according to CBC’s Poll Tracker. That level of support puts them just in range of the 170 seats needed to form a majority government. 

The Conservatives say they plan to argue that Canadians can’t afford to trust the Liberals with the country’s post-pandemic economic recovery.

June 10, 2021

Reporters asked O’Toole multiple questions about something that is shaping up to be a campaign sticking point: the party’s views on mandatory vaccinations. On Friday, the Liberals announced they would require vaccinations for all federal public servants, air and train passengers.

“Conservatives would like Canadians to be able to make their own decision. We have to educate people, not force them,” O’Toole said.

The NDP, meanwhile, is hoping the work New Democrat MPs did in pushing for more generous COVID-19 aid programs will resonate with Canadians at the ballot box and carry them out of fourth place.

The party also has released a platform which promises universal pharmacare, a guaranteed livable income, free tuition and a wealth tax.

September 25, 2020

“Justin Trudeau wants to grab power and wants a majority. But why does he want a majority? It’s certainly not because he wants to help more people or help people more,” said Singh from Montreal, where he kicked off his campaign today.

On day one, Trudeau was asked about the evolving situation in Afghanistan as the Taliban enter the capital.

Hours before the official election call, the government announced Canada is shutting down its embassy in Kabul and suspending diplomatic operations in the country.

It also intends to take in as many as 20,000 additional refugees from the war-torn country.

July 15, 2021

“We are extremely concerned about the situation in Afghanistan and I can assure you that officials and indeed ministers continue and will continue to weigh in on protecting Canadians, getting Canadians safely out of Afghanistan and continuing to step up as Canada has so many times around the world to bring people to safety,” he said.

When an election is called, the federal government enters a “caretaker” mode that limits most major decisions. (CBC)

2019 Federal Election