Obama

Friday September 7, 2013

Friday September 7, 2013

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday September 6, 2013

Obama Arrives In Russia For G20 Summit

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — President Barack Obama is heading into the lion’s den of Russia, confronting Syria’s key patron as well as foreign leaders skeptical of his call for an international military strike against Bashar Assad’s government.

Obama on Thursday began a two-day visit to St. Petersburg for the Group of 20 economic summit, putting him in the same country as Edward Snowden for the first time since the American fugitive fled to Moscow earlier this year. Both Syria and Snowden have been sore points in an already strained U.S.-Russian relationship, fueling the notion that Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin just can’t get along.

The White House went out of its way to say Obama, who arrived Thursday after a quick flight from Stockholm, would not meet one-on-one with the Russian leader while in St. Petersburg. But officials predicted the two would still have a chance to interact when they cross paths at various meetings.

Still struggling to persuade dubious lawmakers at home on Syria, Obama in Russia will seek to win over world leaders reluctant to get drawn in to yet another U.S.-led sortie in a Mideast nation. Although Syria wasn’t formally on the agenda for the economy-focused summit, U.S. officials were resigned to the fact that the bloody civil war there surely would overwhelm any talks about global economics. (Source: Huffington Post)
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Friday August 30, 2013

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The HamiltonSpectator -

Obama: ‘No decision yet’ on Syria strike

US President Barack Obama has said he has not yet decided on a plan for retaliatory action against Syria.

But he said he had concluded Syrian government forces were behind a recent chemical weapons attack near Damascus.

Speaking on US television, Mr Obama said the use of chemical weapons affected US national interests and that sending a “shot across the bows” could have a positive impact on Syria’s war.

His comments follow a day of behind-the-scenes wrangling at the UN.

The UK had been pushing for permanent members of the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution which would have authorised measures to protect civilians in Syria.

But Syrian ally Russia refused to agree to the resolution and the meeting produced no end to the diplomatic stalemate which has long characterised the UN position on Syria.

The US State Department criticised “Russian intransigence” and said it could not allow diplomatic paralysis to serve as a shield for the Syrian leadership.

Russia is sending an anti-submarine ship and a missile cruiser to the eastern Mediterranean.

The ships are being sent to strengthen the navy’s presence in the area because of the “well-known situation” there, the Russian news agency Interfax has said. (Source: BBC News)

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Thursday March 13, 2008

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 13, 2008

Tories set to survive two more confidence votes

Two more confidence votes are scheduled Thursday, during which the Liberals will emerge to see the shadow of their electoral prospects and scurry back underground, presaging at least six more weeks of frosty partisanship.

“About an election, look, not this week,” Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said Wednesday following a caucus meeting.

A vote on extending Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan to 2011 is assured passage after a compromise was hammered out between Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government and Dion’s Liberals.

And a budgetary ways-and-means motion, which guts a new Liberal private member’s bill that would make Registered Education Savings Plans tax deductible, will be allowed to pass the House late Thursday – provided Speaker Peter Milliken doesn’t rule the government tactic out of order.

The votes will effectively end a six-week period of brinkmanship in the Commons that saw the minority Tories survive their third federal budget, a government-manufactured crisis on crime legislation, the Afghan debate and an NDP confidence motion on climate-change policy.

But as parliamentarians embark on a two-week Easter break beginning Friday, the season of resurrection ensures that nothing, politically, has been settled. (Source: Sun Media)