capitalism • mackaycartoons

Saturday November 12, 2022

November 12, 2022 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday November 12, 2022

Exodus continues at Twitter as Elon Musk hints at possible bankruptcy

As Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter entered its third week, and following mass layoffs, the billionaire laid bare a delicate financial future for the social media platform, amid an exodus of top privacy and security executives.

April 12, 2017

Yoel Roth, the head of safety and integrity who had been deputized to publicly address concerns advertisers and users had about the platform, is reportedly the latest to leave the company.

The departures began on the same day Elon Musk addressed employees for the first time, saying that “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question”, according to multiple reports.

The day began with the resignation of three top security officials – chief information security officer Lea Kissner, chief privacy officer Damien Kieran and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty – prompting warnings from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). (Twitter reached a settlement over privacy issues with the FTC in May.) Following those departures, Roth and Twitter’s head of client solutions, Robin Wheeler, also left the company.

June 12, 2019

In an email to employees and a subsequent staff meeting, Musk did little to inspire confidence in the company’s future. In one email, Musk described the dire economic circumstances the company was in and how important he believed its subscription service, Twitter Blue, was to its future.

“Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn,” Musk said in the email. “We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.”

One employee also said at the staff meeting that Musk appeared to downplay employee concerns about how a pared-back Twitter workforce was handling its obligations to maintain privacy and data security standards.

Musk’s memo and staff meeting echoed a livestreamed conversation on Wednesday in which he tried to assuage the concerns of major advertisers and made his most expansive public comments about Twitter’s direction since he closed the $44bn deal to buy the platform late last month and dismissed its top executives.

June 26, 2019

The departures compound the issues plaguing the social media platform since Musk bought it. Musk’s takeover and the resultant confusing back-and-forth on product launches and content moderation policies have led many brands including General Mills to pause ad buys on Twitter – a development the billionaire attempted to rectify in the live stream for advertisers. The duo leading the live stream, Roth and Wheeler, have now both left the company.

“So the two people Elon brought forward to talk with advertisers in an attempt to convince them to keep partnering with the company just quit,” tweeted Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change. “Companies that stay with Twitter at this point will be tied to these dangerous and unhinged policy changes.” (The Guardian)

From sketch to finish, see the current way Graeme completes an editorial cartoon using an iPencil, the Procreate app, and a couple of cheats on an iPad Pro … These sped up clips are posted to encourage others to be creative, to take advantage of the technology many of us already have and to use it to produce satire. Comfort the afflicted. Afflict the comforted.

Friday November 19, 2021

November 19, 2021 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, (Not published in The Hamilton Spectator) – Friday November 19, 2021

Capitalism is killing the planet

There is a myth about human beings that withstands all evidence. It’s that we always put our survival first. This is true of other species. When confronted by an impending threat, such as winter, they invest great resources into avoiding or withstanding it: migrating or hibernating, for example. Humans are a different matter.

4 Waves Cartoon

When faced with an impending or chronic threat, such as climate or ecological breakdown, we seem to go out of our way to compromise our survival. We convince ourselves that it’s not so serious, or even that it isn’t happening. We double down on destruction, swapping our ordinary cars for SUVs, jetting to Oblivia on a long-haul flight, burning it all up in a final frenzy. In the back of our minds, there’s a voice whispering, “If it were really so serious, someone would stop us.” If we attend to these issues at all, we do so in ways that are petty, tokenistic, comically ill-matched to the scale of our predicament. It is impossible to discern, in our response to what we know, the primacy of our survival instinct.

Here is what we know. We know that our lives are entirely dependent on complex natural systems: the atmosphere, ocean currents, the soil, the planet’s webs of life. People who study complex systems have discovered that they behave in consistent ways. It doesn’t matter whether the system is a banking network, a nation state, a rainforest or an Antarctic ice shelf; its behaviour follows certain mathematical rules. In normal conditions, the system regulates itself, maintaining a state of equilibrium. It can absorb stress up to a certain point. But then it suddenly flips. It passes a tipping point, then falls into a new state of equilibrium, which is often impossible to reverse.

Human civilisation relies on current equilibrium states. But, all over the world, crucial systems appear to be approaching their tipping points. If one system crashes, it is likely to drag others down, triggering a cascade of chaos known as systemic environmental collapse. This is what happened during previous mass extinctions. (Continued: The Guardian)

November 19, 2021

Atmospheric rivers of the kind that flooded British Columbia and renched California in recent weeks will become larger — and possibly more destructive — because of climate change, scientists said.

Columns in the atmosphere hundreds of miles long carry water vapour over oceans from the tropics to more temperate regions in amounts more than double the flow of the Amazon River, according to the American Meteorological Society.

These “rivers in the sky” are relatively common, with about 11 present on Earth at any time, according to NASA.

But warming air and seas around the globe causes conditions that scientists said will make them hold more moisture, causing extreme precipitation when they make landfall, often on the west coasts of North America, South America and Western Europe.

Because of climate change, atmospheric rivers are projected to become slightly less frequent, but more intense, according to a 2018 study led by researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“There may be fewer, but they are going to be lasting longer, and more intense,” Vicky Espinoza, an author of the NASA study who is now a graduate student at the University of California Merced, said.

Atmospheric rivers will become about 10% less frequent by the end of this century, but about 25% longer and wider, the study found. That will lead to nearly double the frequency of the most intense atmospheric river storms. (Continued: CTV)

Tuesday May 5, 2020

May 12, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday May 5, 2020

The President Is Unraveling

The country is witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of Donald Trump.

December 20, 2016

In case there was any doubt, the past dozen days have proved we’re at the point in his presidency where Donald Trump has become his own caricature, a figure impossible to parody, a man whose words and actions are indistinguishable from an Alec Baldwin skit on Saturday Night Live.

President Trump’s pièce de résistance came during a late April coronavirus task-force briefing, when he floated using “just very powerful light” inside the body as a potential treatment for COVID-19 and then, for good measure, contemplated injecting disinfectant as a way to combat the effects of the virus “because you see it gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on them, so it’d be interesting to check that.”

But the burlesque show just keeps rolling on.

December 16, 2000

Take this past weekend, when former President George W. Bush delivered a three-minute video as part of The Call to Unite, a 24-hour live-stream benefiting COVID-19 relief.

Bush joined other past presidents, spiritual and community leaders, front-line workers, artists, musicians, psychologists, and Academy Award winning actors. They offered advice, stories, and meditations, poetry, prayers, and performances. The purpose of The Call to Unite (which I played a very minor role in helping organize) was to offer practical ways to support others, to provide hope, encouragement, empathy, and unity.

In his video, which went viral, Bush—in whose White House I worked—never mentioned Trump. Instead, he expressed gratitude to health-care workers, encouraged Americans to abide by social-distancing rules, and reminded his fellow Americans that we have faced trying times before.

April 7, 2001

“I have no doubt, none at all, that this spirit of service and sacrifice is alive and well in America,” Bush said. He emphasized that “empathy and simple kindness are essential, powerful tools of national recovery.” And America’s 43rd president asked us to “remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat.”

“In the final analysis,” he said, “we are not partisan combatants; we are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God.” Bush concluded, “We rise or fall together, and we are determined to rise.”

That was too much for Trump, who attacked his Republican predecessor on (where else?) Twitter: “[Bush] was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!”

March 26, 2019

So think about that for a minute. George W. Bush made a moving, eloquent plea for empathy and national unity, which enraged Donald Trump enough that he felt the need to go on the attack.

But there’s more. On the same weekend that he attacked Bush for making an appeal to national unity, Trump said this about Kim Jong Un, one of the most brutal leaders in the world: “I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!”

Then, Sunday night, sitting at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial for a town-hall interview with Fox News, Trump complained that he is “treated worse” than President Abraham Lincoln. “I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen,” Trump said.

By Monday morning, the president was peddling a cruel and bizarre conspiracy theoryaimed at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, a Trump critic, with Trump suggesting in his tweet that a “cold case” be opened to look into the death of an intern in 2001. (Continued: The Atlantic)

“Graeme MacKay suggests that US leadership is more concerned with the economy than with the human toll. This seems like a harsh take, but, then again, Dear Leader has forbidden any members of his corona task force from testifying before Congress and has announced plans to disband the group at the end of the month.”

Wednesday September 24, 2019

October 2, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday September 24, 2019

‘How dare you’: Teen environmental activist Greta Thunberg scolds world leaders at UN climate talks

Scolded for doing little, leader after leader promised the United Nations on Monday to do more to prevent a warming world from reaching even more dangerous levels.

December 1, 2015

As they made their pledges at the Climate Action Summit, though, they and others conceded it was not enough. And even before they spoke, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg shamed them over and over for their inaction: “How dare you?”

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres concluded the summit by listing 77 countries that committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, 70 nations pledging to do more to fight climate change, with 100 business leaders promising to join the green economy and one-third of the global banking sector signing up to green goals.

“Action by action, the tide is turning,” he said. “But we have a long way to go.”

June 2, 2017

Businesses and charities also got in on the act, at times even going bigger than major nations. Microsoft founder Bill Gates announced Monday that his foundation, along with The World Bank and some European governments, would provide $790 million in financial help to 300 million of the world’s small farmers adapt to climate change. The Gates foundation pledged $310 million of that.

“The world can still prevent the absolute worst effects of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing new technologies and sources of energy,” Gates said. “But the effects of rising temperatures are already underway.”

As the day went on Monday and the promises kept coming, the United States seemed out in the cold.

Before world leaders made their promises in three-minute speeches, the 16-year-old Thunberg gave an emotional appeal in which she scolded the leaders with her repeated phrase, “How dare you.”

“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here,” said Thunberg, who began a lone protest outside the Swedish parliament more than a year ago that culminated in Friday’s global climate strikes.

November 28, 2015

“I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you have come to us young people for hope. How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.

Thunberg told the UN that even the strictest emission cuts being talked about only gives the world a 50 per cent chance of limiting future warming to another 0.4 C from now, which is a global goal. Those odds, she said, are not good enough.

“We will not let you get away with this,” Thunberg said. “Right now is where we draw the line.”

As this all played out, scientists announced that Arctic sea ice reached its annual summer low and this year the ice shrank so much it tied for the second lowest mark in 40 years of monitoring. (Hamilton Spectator)

Tuesday April 5, 2016

April 4, 2016 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday April 5, 2016

Kill it, spin it – Putin will do anything to stifle the Panama Papers story

The Panama Papers are a wake-up call for anyone who may have doubted how deeply cronyism and corruption are rooted into Russia’s leadership. But for those who have followed the inner workings of Putin’s presidency for the past 16 years or so, they are as much confirmation as revelation.

What will be truly fascinating is watching how this new mass of information is dealt with by the Putin regime over time, and how this might affect an already tense relationship between the Kremlin and the west.

The first time a large amount of information was leaked about Russia’s power system was in 2010, when a trove of US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks described a “virtual mafia state” and a system in which the Russian president allegedly used proxies to hide “illicit wealth”. These documents were damaging enough, detailing a kleptocratic authoritarian system where Russian officials, oligarchs and organised crime came together to amass large fortunes. At the time, the Kremlin dismissed this as “nothing interesting or worthy of comment”.

One key difference today is that the Panama Papers have emerged at a time when relations between Russia and the west are at an all-time low. When the WikiLeaks documents were published, the US and Russia were still officially in a “reset” phase, with pledges of cooperation on issues ranging from Afghanistan to nuclear disarmament. But since then, it’s all been downhill. The Russian government spoke earlier this year of a “new cold war”. Russian strategic bomber planes have flown over parts of Europe. Nato and the US are deploying new forces in the east of the continent. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine have led to western sanctions.

Along with low oil prices, this has put Russia’s economy under severe strain – with many analysts wondering whether that might lead to more aggressive ultra-nationalism in Moscow. Arguably, one key turning point, in this deterioration of relations with the west, came when the Russian regime accused Washington of stoking street demonstrations against the regime in 2011-12. (Continued: The Guardian)

Posted to Le Vif, L’express, Brussels, Belgium