jingoism

Thursday May 20, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 20, 2021

Vaccination Patriotism

Ten thousand shots was the hope. The result was 10,470. That’s how many doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered at an immunization clinic at the Thorncliffe Park Community Hub in Toronto on Sunday. Until well after dark, long lines snaked through the parking lot, where people were entertained by DJs before entering the cavernous site. By the end of the day, the clinic, run by more than 50 local community and health care organizations, set a record for the most shots administered at one location on a single day. That record-breaking day in Toronto is a reason why Canada is about to surpass the United States—likely on Thursday—when it comes to the percentage of population with first doses. Right now, Canada has given first doses to 44.7 per cent of its population. In the United States, it’s 47.3 per cent. 

March 31, 2021

First doses is an important metric, for not only do first doses slow the spread of COVID-19 within communities but they are “a sign of people’s willingness to get vaccinated,” says Trevor Tombe, an associate professor of economics at the University of Calgary who provides daily updates on Canada’s vaccine progress on his Twitter feed as well as his GitHub page. “You can’t get your second shot unless you’ve got your first. And so measuring how many people are willing to get their first shot tells us the state of demand for vaccines in Canada.” 

This week alone, Canada will receive 4.5 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine (Pfizer moved up next week’s delivery because of the Victoria Day long weekend). And that has allowed provinces to open the vaccine appointment spigot even wider: As of May 18, everyone aged 18 and older in Ontario can book a time to get their shot on the provincial system. 

March 4, 2021

This ramp-up in Canada’s vaccine rollout has been a long time coming. On March 1, vaccine deliveries were so small that Canada wasn’t on pace to reach 75 per cent of its population having first doses until Nov. 24, 2022. Then, vaccine supply accelerated in April and May. Now, at our current pace, Tombe’s model suggests that Canada should reach 75 per cent by June 19. In addition, 75 per cent of all eligible Canadians 12 and up could have second doses by the second week in August. 

Any comparison with the United States interests Canadians. On April 9, when Canada’s per capita rate of new cases surpassed that of the United States for the first time, there were rumblings about what went wrong—Canada’s third wave was intensifying while the United States was seeing a long-term drop in cases as its vaccination effort was yielding results. While Canada’s rate of new cases has improved from the 205 per million population on April 9, the U.S. has dropped even faster. As of May 16, Canada posted a seven-day average of 160 per million while the U.S. is at 100. 

March 13, 2021

But the United States is struggling with the concerning issue of vaccine hesitancy. A late-April poll showed that around a quarter of adults in the U.S. don’t want to get a shot. In Canada, only nine per cent say they won’t get the vaccine compared to 88 per cent who either will or have received a dose, according to a new Angus Reid poll, which bodes well for Canada achieving herd immunity. (Maclean’s)  

Meanwhile, The world has reached a situation of “vaccine apartheid”, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday, and was no longer just at risk of that status. “The big problem is a lack of sharing. So the solution is more sharing,” he told a virtual Paris Peace Forum event. (Reuters) 

April 28, 2021

Also, An international humanitarian group is calling on the Canadian government to commit to sharing its COVID-19 vaccine supply, at a time when other low- and middle-income countries are falling behind on inoculation.

May 11, 2021

The medical non-profit group Doctors Without Borders is asking Ottawa to stop accepting vaccine supply from COVAX, the global pool procurement mechanism for COVID-19 vaccines. It recently announced that it’s short at least 140 million doses, in part because of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis in India. The World Health Organization, UNICEF and other international agencies have called on G7 countries to donate excess vaccine supplies. While countries like the United States and France have announced plans to donate millions of doses, Canada has yet to make such an announcement. In the meantime, it’s continuing to receive COVID-19 doses from COVAX, with 600,000 doses of AstraZeneca that arrived last week, and more expected by the end of June. (Yahoo News) 

 

Friday December 11, 2015

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Friday December 11, 2015 Syrian refugees now in Toronto look forward to 'beautiful future' Georgina Zires and Kevork Jamkossian looked both happy and haggard while toting their 16-month old daughter as they arrived in Toronto after spending almost a day in transit with more than 160 other refugees who have fled civil war in Syria to start a new life in Canada. Waiting to greet them at Pearson airport Thursday night was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, who helped the family pick coats from piles of donated clothing. "Now, we feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise," Jamkossian told Trudeau through an interpreter. "That's how we feel." The couple was joined by more than 160 other Syrian refugees who arrived in Toronto in the first government aircraft carrying refugees, as the Canadian government works to fulfil a pledge to bring in 25,000 refugees by the end of February. In Syria, Zires worked as a clerk in a women's clothing shop and Jamkossian worked as a blacksmith. A better life for their daughter Madeleine was the main motivation for coming to Canada. "She is the reason for us to come here because here she can do many things," Zires said, also through an interpreter. "In other countries, she can do nothing." After landing in Toronto, the new arrivals were given warm coats, social insurance numbers and health cards after a security and health screening at a special airport terminal renovated for their arrival. After processing, they were bused to an airport hotel to rest. "They step off the plane as refugees, but they walk out of this terminal as permanent residents of Canada with social insurance numbers, with health cards and with an opportunity to become full Canadians," Trudeau he said. Shadi Mardelli, who spoke to reporters at the airport shortly after he was processed, said he's looking forward to a "beautiful future" in Canada. (Sou

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 11, 2015

Syrian refugees now in Toronto look forward to ‘beautiful future’

Georgina Zires and Kevork Jamkossian looked both happy and haggard while toting their 16-month old daughter as they arrived in Toronto after spending almost a day in transit with more than 160 other refugees who have fled civil war in Syria to start a new life in Canada.

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Wednesday November 25, 2015 10,000 Syrian refugees to be resettled by yearÕs end, 15,000 more by February The Liberal government will not meet its Dec. 31 deadline to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees and now says it aims to complete the program by February. The new target is to bring 10,000 people to Canada by year's end and the remainder in the first two months of 2016. The group will be a mix of government-assisted and privately sponsored refugees, all of whom will be identified by the end of next month. The Canadian government is working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as well as the Turkish government to find suitable candidates. Priority for government refugees will be given to complete families, women at risk, members of sexual minorities and single men only if they are identified as gay, bisexual or transgender or are travelling as part of a family. Private sponsors have no restrictions on whom they can bring over and the majority of refugees expected to arrive by the end of the year will be coming via private groups. All health and security screening will take place overseas and once that's complete, refugees will be flown to Toronto and Montreal, largely on chartered aircraft. From there, they will be spread across 36 different destination cities which already have resettlement programs in place. Temporary accommodation will be provided by the military if required, but the government aims to have lodging in place in the host cities and towns. The federal government cost for the program is an estimated $678 million over the next six years but doesn't include additional funding that could be necessary for provinces and territories. More than 500 officials have been assigned to work on the massive resettlement program, one of the largest of its kind in the world as it relates to the Syrian refugee crisis. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) http://www.thespec.com/news-s

Waiting to greet them at Pearson airport Thursday night was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, who helped the family pick coats from piles of donated clothing.

“Now, we feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise,” Jamkossian told Trudeau through an interpreter. “That’s how we feel.”

The couple was joined by more than 160 other Syrian refugees who arrived in Toronto in the first government aircraft carrying refugees, as the Canadian government works to fulfil a pledge to bring in 25,000 refugees by the end of February.

In Syria, Zires worked as a clerk in a women’s clothing shop and Jamkossian worked as a blacksmith.

A better life for their daughter Madeleine was the main motivation for coming to Canada.

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Friday November 20, 2015 More than 30 U.S. states refusing Syrian refugees on 'shaky legal ground' The governors of at least 31 mostly Republican states have announced they will bar Syrian asylum-seekers from attempting to start new lives in their communities. But the tough-sounding pledges Ñ coming just days after 129 people were murdered by Islamic militants in France Ñ may not have much of a legal foundation to stand on, according to Washington authorities on immigration and refugee issues. "It's very shaky legal ground," said Robert McCaw, the government affairs officer with the Council on AmericanÐIslamic Relations on Capitol Hill. "The thing is, these governors don't really have any legal means to prevent the resettlement of Syrian refugees." To date, governors of the majority of America's states Ñ including such southern bastions of conservatism as Georgia, Alabama and Florida, as well as northern states like Michigan, Illinois and Maine Ñ have pulled in the welcome mat, saying Syrian refugees pose a security risk that must be taken into account. Their tough line also mirrors that which some Republican presidential candidates are taking in the wake of the Paris attacks. But immigration isn't a state-determined issue here, it is a federal one. U.S. refugee admissions are announced by the State Department every year on Oct. 1 as part of the White House's presidential determination for allowing refugees in a given fiscal year. State governors thus do not have the authority to set limits on who or what the refugee influx should look like, said Westy Egmont, director of the Immigration Integration Lab at Boston College. "Any refugee welcome to the U.S. has legal status, and therefore the freedom of movement within all 50 states," Egmont said. "We don't have borders between New Hampshire and Vermont, or New York and Pennsylvania. People are coming and they get to choose where they choose to b

“She is the reason for us to come here because here she can do many things,” Zires said, also through an interpreter. “In other countries, she can do nothing.”

After landing in Toronto, the new arrivals were given warm coats, social insurance numbers and health cards after a security and health screening at a special airport terminal renovated for their arrival. After processing, they were bused to an airport hotel to rest.

“They step off the plane as refugees, but they walk out of this terminal as permanent residents of Canada with social insurance numbers, with health cards and with an opportunity to become full Canadians,” Trudeau he said.

Shadi Mardelli, who spoke to reporters at the airport shortly after he was processed, said he’s looking forward to a “beautiful future” in Canada. (Source: CBC News)

 

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)