Cold War

Friday November 8, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday November 8, 2019

Western Order Reels on Berlin Wall Anniversary

June 19, 2018

The stage is set at the Brandenburg Gate, the dignitaries are assembling — but 30 years on, is there much cause to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall?

The iconic moment of 1989 crowned a year of revolution that toppled communist regimes across the Soviet bloc, marking the end of the Cold War and the start of a hopeful new era.

The global divisions caused by the 1991 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq stopped that in its tracks. Optimism quickly turned to cynicism, economic boom to bust, and electorates began to look for new answers.

June 9, 2018

Today, the western liberal order that prevailed in 1989 is crumbling. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is resurgent, communist China is the world’s second-biggest economy, and the U.S. under Donald Trump openly scorns multilateralism, belittles NATO and calls the European Union a foe.

But even as the west looks spent, it’s too early to administer the last rites.

The global climate emergency upends politics as we know it and represents a chance for the west to lead, even if Greta Thunberg complains it’s not enough. Europe is a green energy powerhouse. Environmental concerns top the EU’s agenda. Germany’s Green party is vying for first place in opinion polls.

A Green chancellor of Europe’s dominant country: Few could have imagined that in 1989. (Financial Post)

In 1989, a suggestion was drawn in my comic strip Alas & Alack that Donald Trump would buy the Berlin Wall. Interesting prophesy on how history would eventually play out with a future U.S. President and his penchant for walls and keeping people divided.


 

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Tuesday, February 10, 2015Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Angela Merkel meets Obama, set for private briefing with Stephen Harper

For Sale from the MacKayCartoons BoutiqueGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel will be in Ottawa later today to give Prime Minister Stephen Harper an update on her frenzied transatlantic shuttle diplomacy on the Ukraine crisis.

The Canadian Press has learned Merkel’s supper-hour arrival in Ottawa for talks with Harper will allow the prime minister to receive a private briefing on the West’s renewed push to end the continued fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Monday November 17, 2014Ukraine’s military has been battling Russian-backed separatists since April in a conflict that the United Nations says has killed 5,300 people, a figure that has spiked in recent weeks.

Merkel was in Washington this morning for a previously scheduled meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, amid reports of a rift between the U.S. and Europe over whether to arm Ukraine’s military.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Merkel, Obama said Russian aggression against Ukraine has reinforced the unity of the U.S. and its partners in Europe and around the world. If Russia continues on its current course, he added, its political and economic isolation will worsen.

Obama said Russia has violated nearly every commitment it made in a previous deal reached in Minsk. He said instead of withdrawing troops, Russian forces have continued to operate in eastern Ukraine and to co-ordinate attacks.

He says Russia has sent in more tanks, heavy artillery and armoured personnel. Obama says separatists have seized more territory with Russia’s support. (Source: Toronto Star)

Tuesday March 25, 2014

Tuesday March 25, 2014By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 25, 2014

G7 leaders agree to abandon Sochi summit, will hold June meeting in Brussels

G7 Leaders agreed Monday to hold their own summit in Brussels, abandoning plans for a scheduled G8 summit with Russia in Sochi amid political turmoil in Ukraine.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014In a joint statement, Western nations and Japan said it will “suspend” its participation in the G8 until Russia “changes course,” and that they will meet in G7 “format” for the summit in Brussels.

The decision comes as G7 leaders held an emergency session in The Hague to discuss what to do about Russia in light of the ongoing crisis in eastern Europe.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper urged his G7 counterparts to expel Russian President Vladimir Putin from the G8 due Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea and its aggression toward Ukraine.

Tuesday June 18, 2013Earlier, Harper said discussions on Russia will have to be made a priority over economic concerns.

Harper and his fellow G7 leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, gathered at the official residence of the Dutch Prime Minister.

A Russia-European summit that was scheduled for June 3 in Sochi was previously cancelled. (Source: CTV News)

CONTEXT – U.S. President Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, West Germany, June 12, 1987:

Thursday February 6, 2014

Thursday February 6, 2014Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 6, 2014

Bringing Olympic Spirit back to the Games. The West’s Media Campaign against Russia

As the Olympic torch draws closer to Sochi, an international media campaign is in full swing, attempting to question Russia’s ability to provide a safe and tolerant environment for the athletes and guests of the Winter Olympics.

Beijing Complaints

Setting aside the issue of whether the complaints about Russia’s human rights record or the alleged terrorist threats in Bigger Sochi region are legitimate, we should point out a couple of official goals of Olympism according to the Olympic Charter:

“Promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity” (item 2) and

“Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement” (item 6).

Therefore a respectful attitude towards any nation participating (to say nothing about hosting) the Olympics should be an integral component of what we call the Olympic spirit. It seems this rule is kept when the torch is about to hit the streets of London, Vancouver, Salt Lake City or Sydney, despite the wealth of opportunities to mourn the exterminated native Britons, Indians, and Aborigine tribes.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013Even the 1936 Summer and Winter Games organized in Berlin by the Sports Office of Nazi’s Third Reich were considered to be quite in keeping with the Olympic Charter despite racist “Reich Citizenship Law” and the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor”, adopted by the Reichstag in September 1935. For the global powers of the time (UK&US), over half a million German Jews being instantly stripped of their citizenship was not a sufficient pretext to suspend two (!) Olympic events in a country that would wage a world war in less than three years!

In contrast, the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics were unilaterally boycotted by the Western countries, undermining the basic principles of Olympic Charter for the first time in modern history. Given the latest confessions by Zbigniew Brzezinski about CIA’ role in making Soviet military contingent enter Afghanistan and consequent launch of anti-Soviet Al-Qaeda project, the pharisaical US-inspired boycott in 1980 today looks even more disgusting in retrospect.

http://www.mackaycartoons.net/yahoo_files/2010/huh2010-02-26.html

Olympic Mascot Barbs

Another dimension of hypocrisy was evident quite recently, on the very day of the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when a provocative bloody move against South Ossetia was ordered by the former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, who undoubtedly secured Washington’s blessing in advance. The offensive anti-Russian media hysteria that spoiled the Beijing Olympics that year was later revealed to be absolutely baseless and slanderous. Who was called to account for that? Who apologized to the Russian people and the befuddled international community? (Source: Global Research News)

August 14, 2007

Last week I did a cartoon showing Vladimir Putin atop Lenin’s tomb reminiscent of photos we’d see of Soviet leaders during the cold war years. I was inspired to draw it following renewed interest by the Russians in the Arctic from the North Pole to the Mediterranean via the Caucasus. It made me think back, before Boris Yeltsin, to the last time I drew Lenin’s tomb back when Mikhail Gorbachev was in power, as he warming up to the west with Glasnost, and implementing political and economic reforms otherwise known as Perestroika. The year was 1989, democracy was spreading throughout Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall had just come down, and I was a student at the University of Ottawa. I was just starting out getting my worked published in the student press, through the campus newspaper called The Fulcrum. I had a cartoon strip called:

It was modern day (mostly Canadian) political news placed in a medieval setting. Brian Mulroney was the King of Canadaland, Gorbachev was the Russian Tsar, they rode around in horses, they spoke in Monty Pythonesque olde englishe. For most of the time it existed between September 1989, and April 1991, I collaborated with my friend, Paul Nichols, who was a fellow history student. He helped write it, and I drew it. It was published for each weekly edition of the Fulcrum.


Click here to see a larger version.

In retrospect, they were a bit wordy. The jokes were corny. The drawings were a bit crude, but keep in mind that we were twenty year olds. At the time home computers were still very basic word processors, there was no Internet, and early versions of Photoshop were still half a decade away. The inking of Alas & Alack had to be configured with exacto knives and glue stick. Tones were done using Chartpak shading film, and some special text was incorporated using Letraset transferrable lettering. It was all very time consuming work to put together a single Alas & Alack cartoon. A perfect excuse to keep me from reading textbooks, writing essays and studying for exams.


Click here to see a larger version.

Throughout the series I portrayed former Canadian Prime Ministers Clark and Turner, who were still active in politics at the time, as “erstwhile kings” who would show up every now and then carrying the crowns they once wore when they were in charge. Pierre Trudeau would show up portrayed as some sort of God-like character who lived in an acropolis type of temple on Mount Royal.

More Alas & Alack in the days to come….

FEEDBACK

I remember Alas and Alack quite well, Mr. Mackay. I started studying at U of O in 1990 and I remember seeing it and a whole bunch of other cartoons of yours in the newspaper. Looks like you’ve done pretty well in cartooning eversince. Not surprising! Glad I can keep enjoying your work.

Marc LeBlanc (August 16, 2007)